Friday Flyer on Monday - October 2, 2017

Spotlight on the Boston Area QuarkNet Center 

The Boston center meets periodically during the school year and then has a two- to three-day summer meeting, usually in August. This past year, they started off on a chilly November day discussing truth, science, and (a bit) the U.S. Constitution, moved on to masterclasses, and then took up dark matter in May. The Boston center finished in August with  a two-day workshop in which they examined the astronomical evidence for dark matter and dark energy. It is not surprising that the discussion ranged from the historical to the cutting edge in the Boston center; it is one of the original 1999 QuarkNet centers with a great group of teachers, three QuarkNet fellows, and three great mentors from two top universities.

News from QuarkNet Central

Reminders of upcoming activities: Check the first International Masterclasses circular of the new academic year if you have not seen it yet. Yes, it is already time to start thinking about it. Next month will be big. November will kick off early from Dark Matter Day on October 31, followed in two weeks with World Wide Data Day on November 14, and finishing with International Cosmic Day on November 30. 

If you are interested or might be interested in participating in World Wide Data Day 2017 on November 14, please contact Ken Cecire or fill out the Interest Form. You can learn more on the W2D2 page. We are looking for teachers who can, with support from QuarkNet, engage their students that day—it takes no more than two hours, soup to nuts—and for particle physicists who might moderate one or more of the 30-minute videoconferences from wherever they are.

QuarkNet Website Nuts and Bolts

Please keep exploring our new QuarkNet.org website. It continues to evolve as we get your input, and we find adjustments to make. One is that the problem form is now even easier to find; use the menu at the top and go to the TOOLS drop-down and then SITE ISSUES. Please use it when you run into a problem!

Mentors and center leaders: Please take a look at the Active QuarkNet Centers page on the site and check the link to your center. Does the link need to be updated or changed? Perhaps there is no link for your center. Let's get the best, most up-to-date link for each QuarkNet center. E-mail Shane or Ken for help.

Physics Experiment Roundup

LIGO is now joined by the VIRGO gravitiational wave detector in Italy—and they have teamed up to discover a new gravitiational wave event. Can Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) in space be linked to neutrinos? IceCube—and QuarkNet mentor Justin Vanderbroucke—will try to find out. 

Resources

The Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced tomorrow!

The SESAME accelerator lab will open two beamlines this year. Learn about this unique international project from symmetry. More from the same source: basic research shapes the future.

Just for Fun

Fermilab had its 50th Anniversary Community Open House on Saturday, September 23. QuarkNet was there, inviting all visitors to—of course—help us take data. Here are the results.

Sadly, well-known game show host Monty Hall just passed away. Among his legacies: the tough, paradoxical Monty Hall problem in statisitics. (H/T to David Burge on Twitter.)