Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP), University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC): Annual Report

The 2017 QuarkNet program at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics featured one main activity: the Particle Physics Masterclass for high school students.  SCIPP and UCSC continue strong local support of the QuarkNet program, providing administrative support (Vicki Johnson and Bianca Moncada-Martin) and additional funding to enable the activities.

The Particle Physics Masterclass took place on Saturday, March 18, 2017 at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Local particle physicists from SCIPP introduced topics in particle physics, including Overview of Particle Physics and Detectors (Prof. Jason Nielsen), Theoretical Physics (Dr. Francesco d’Eramo), Graduate Student Experience (Jacob Pasner and Carolyn Gee), and Detector Electronics Laboratory Tour (Jason Nielsen).  Representatives from QuarkNet (Robert Baker) and the high school teacher community (Stu Briber) were also in attendance, along with SCIPP administrators (Vicki Johnson and Bianca Moncada-Martin). 

For this session, we expanded our invitations to all high schools in Santa Cruz Country, adding particular outreach to the schools with large populations that are underrepresented historically in physics.  There were 3 high school student participants, all of whom were enthusiastic and did a good job with the data analysis.  We connected to a videoconference hosted at Fermilab, with moderator Ken Cecire and host physicists Dr. Jimmy Proudfoot and Dr. Sudhir Malik.