
Virtual QuarkNet Center
Submitted by kcecire
on Friday, May 31, 2013 - 07:51
The Virtual QuarkNet Center is a group of teachers, generally far from a geographic QuarkNet center but who work together using online tools to collaborate. Virtual QuarkNet Center teachers have monthly Sunday evening videoconferences during the school year and meet face-to-face once each summer. The teachers participate in cosmic ray studies using the cosmic ray e-Lab and in international masterclasses from their schools. The mentors, Antonio Delgado, a particle physicist at the University of Notre Dame, and Danielle McDermott, condensed matter physicist at Pacific Univerisity; emeritus mentor Dan Karmgard, another Notre Dame particle physicist; the lead teachers, Dave Trapp (dtrapp@mac.com) and Mike Wadness, are QuarkNet fellows from Washington and Massachusetts, respectively.
Description
VQC is a group of QuarkNet teachers who are separated geographically but collaborate online.
Kathy and Debbie

1.
Compressional or P (for primary)
Transverse or S (for secondary)
Love
Rayleigh
P and S are called body waves because they travel or propagate throught the body of Earth. The latter two are called surface waves they travel along the Earth's surface and amplitude decreases with depth into the Earth.
2.
First two, P and S are within the earth as compressions (longitudinal waves) and transverse waves.
Second two, Love and Rayleigh are surface wave.
Love waves are transverse waves that vibrate the ground in the horizontal direction perpendicular to the direction that the waves are traveling They are formed by the interaction of S waves with Earth's surface and shallow structure and are dispersive waves. Only can be measured on seismomaters that measure the horizontal ground motion.
Rayleigh waves are the slowest of all the seismic waves and the most complicated. The are dispersive so the particular speed at which they travel depends on the wave period and the near-surface geologic structure. Particle movement is eliptical and decreases with depth.
3.
The LIGO interferometer mirrors can be affected by seismic waves and must be separated out. All the different earth shaking...hurricanes, earth quakes, etc. are background information that needs to be filtered out.
LIGO e-Lab Workshop for VQNet in Chicago

August 11th-14th, 2016
Objectives
Participating teachers will be able to use the LIGO e-Lab to:
- Plot and interpret data recorded by LIGO seismic instruments
- Explain the importance of LIGO seismic data in gravitiational wave search
- Use LIGO seismic data to demonstrate classical physics concepts.
Location
University of Illinois Chicago-Physics Building
SES2214
Agenda
Times and specific activities are subject to adjustment.
Thursday August 1109:00 Coffee, Registration 09:15 Introduction
09:45 Break 10:00 Breaking News from CMS, HEP, and other exciting areas of Physics
11:00 Intro to Gravity Waves via Youtube 11:15 Interferometer activity
12:00 Lunch 13:00 Videos: 13:30 Exploration of LIGO e-Lab:
14:30 Break 14:45 Search and analyze in data: 15:30 Begin resreach
16:30 End of Day
19:05 Cubs vs. Cardinals |
Friday August 1209:00 Coffee/Reflection
09:15 Research activity
10:00 LIGO Hanford Virtual Visit 10:30 Break 10:45 Continure with Research Activity 11:15 Begin Poster Creation 12:00 Lunch 13:00 Gravitational Waves Presentation
14:30 Break 14:45 Sharing and Discussion of How We Teach Universal Gravity in High School
16:15 Reflection 16:30 End of Day |
Saturday August 139:00 Coffee 9:15 Continue to Work on Posters 10:00 Present Posters 10:30 Break 10:45 Implementation discussion 11:15 Reflection 11:30 Evaluation 12:00 End of workshop |
Resources |
Contacts |
New member invited

Hi all,
Great conference last Sunday night. Danielle, you are the bravest driver I know! I spoke with Kathy after our conference. She is doing well. Wadness, you were on the road, so I couldn't talk BB with you. I hope BRS spring training is going well, honest!
With permission from Ken and Dan, I have conferenced with and invited Allen Daniels, a physics teacher in the Parkway system in St. Louis regarding joining our group. I used his school email and sent an invite. He should be expecting this since I conferenced with him in person in StL. He was previously a virtual member when he was working at Crossroads school in St. Louis, but I don't know what his level of participation was back then. His email is
adaniels@parkwayschools.net
Enjoy break if you are on one. I had cervical disc surgery the Monday after our conference and am convalenscing at home.
And hey, everyone who does not have a pic of themselves in the drupal, get a pic in there. I like the pictures.
Debbie G.
Cosmic Ray Workshop in St. Louis

December 12, 2015
Tiny URL for this page: http://tinyurl.com/j99vx5s.
Pre-workshop
- Read ahead: Cosmic Extremes
- CRMD users download EQUIP and USB-UART driver onto laptop you will use in the workshop
- Explore Cosmic Ray e-Lab on your own
- Check Cosmic Ray e-Lab account; if you need one, contact Ken Cecire
- Consult punch list: be sure we have all we need
- Parkway North High School detector construction, Friday 11 Decemember, 09:00 CT
- Fort Zumwalt North High School detector construction, Friday 11 December, 13:30 CT
Agenda
09:00 Greetings and Registration
09:15 Set up detectors, connect to computers using EQUIP, set voltages and rates, calibrate
10:45 Break
11:00 Start taking data; explore Cosmic Ray e-Lab (studen group registration, milestones)
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Upload Data; BLESSING and PERF in CR e-Lab
14:00 Explore posters in e-Lab; design an investigation
14:45 Break
15:00 Investigation and poster creation
17:00 Discussion of longer-term investigations; use of detector in school; planning
18:00 end of workshop
Resources
Most resources you need are found in the Cosmic Ray e-Lab uunder Student Home > Library > Resources. Here are a few addtional resources:
- User Agreement
- MINOS Live Event Display
- Video by QN mentor Veronica Bindi: How cosmic rays help us understand the universe
- Classic video: Time dilation; an experiment with mu-mesons
Addenda
How to download and install EQUIP:
- Go to Cosmic Ray e-Lab
- Go to Student Home; log with your credentials or as a guest
- Go to Library and then Resources
- Find link under CRMD Data Collection and follow
- Download EQUiP and uncompress
- Read README
How to download and install USB-UART adapter software:
- Go to Silicon Labs CP-210x page
- Find OS for youir computer and choose download link
- Install
2015 Annual Report - virtual QuarkNet

Virtual QuarkNet is a group of far flung, often isolated American high school science teachers from Boston and Atlanta, to the northwest coast of Washington, and Shanghai. Mentors Antonio Delgado and Dan Karmgard are assisted by lead teachers Mike Wadness and Dave Trapp. In the 2014-15 school year they held 10 monthly meetings via Sunday evening (Monday morning in Asia) video conference. Attendance varied from 6 to 8 with most meetings attended by 7 participants. Sessions typically lasted from an hour to 90 minutes. Several sessions had guest speakers and nearly all of them included discussions of the latest physics discoveries or theories.
Many of the group members have and use cosmic ray detectors at their school and most of the group also had high school students participate in the Masterclass.
The group also typically gathers for a couple days each summer at a site which offers new insights into physics. In early August 2015 the group gathered in Albuquerque and Los Alamos New Mexico with the crucial assistance of physicist Danielle McDermott. In New Mexico the group had the opportunity to visit and tour the Very Large Array (VLA) which has been detecting the faintest radio signals from near the time of the Big Bang. At Los Alamos, the group enjoyed a variety of talks that featured the history of Los Alamos, the use of bacteria to do work on a system, a connection between Faraday and the Higgs, and the Mars Curiosity Rover. In addition the group took advantage of the clear, high desert sky to do some spectacular star gazing facilitated by our resident astronomer Jim Small. The group ended its workshop with a visit to Bandelier National Monument to hike through the ancient pueblos. Thank you to our mentors and especially to Danielle McDermott for arranging a valuable summer workshop.
Video conference directions

https://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=18079
2014 Annual Report - Virtual Center

Virtual QuarkNet is a group of far flung, often isolated American high school science teachers from Boston and Atlanta, to the northwest coast of Washington, Taiwan and Shanghai. Mentors Antonio Delgado and Dan Karmgard are assisted by lead teachers Mike Wadness and Dave Trapp. In the 2013-14 school year they held 10 monthly meetings via Sunday evening (Monday morning in Asia) video conference. Attendance varied from 5 to 10 with an average of 8.2 participants. Sessions typically lasted from an hour to 90 minutes. Several sessions had guest speakers and nearly all of them included discussions of the latest physics discoveries or theories.
Many of the group members have cosmic ray detectors at their school and many also had high school students participate in Masterclass.
The group also typically gathers for a couple days each summer at a site which offers new insights into physics. In 2014 the group gathered in Spearfish SD with the assistance of members of the Spearfish QuarkNet group. They learned of the new EQUIP Java cosmic ray detector interface, the new detector data blessing protocols and interface support, viewed the new International Linear Collider Masterclass (using simulated data), visited research activities on the Black Hills State campus, visited the Sanford underground Laboratory learning about the latest neutrino and dark matter research, and sat in on a couple CETUP conference talks. Time permitted many of the members to visit other local areas such as Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial and Devil’s Tower.
2014 Summer virtual Workshop

july workshop at Spearfish SD
tuesday July 22
introductions (at BHSU)
CETUP talk: neutrino interactions with nuclei: Ulrich Mosel at Lead middle school
cosmic ray research: James Stith (At BHSU)
New JAVA detector control interface
New blessing tools
How to bless data
problem with solar neutrinos: Kara Ketter at BHSU
Wednesday July 23
research at BHSU: Brianna Mount at BHSU
research at Sanford Lab: Jaret Heise at lab in Lead
tour of mine lift mechanism
Q & A with CETUP participants: Lead middle school
dinner meeting above Deadwood
Thursday July 24
ILC QuarkNet Workshop: Mike Wadness (at BHSU)
Japan workshop
ILC presentation
Analysis of simulated ILC data
ILC Draft Mini Masterclass

QuarkNet Link
/content/ilc-dreft-mini-masterclass
Lesson Link-includes spreadsheet
http://wadness.wikispaces.com/Japan+and+the+ILC
