Friday Flyer - December 8, 2017

Spotlight on Liz Quigg
Many of you may not know Liz personally, but chances are that you're familiar with some of her work. Liz joined Fermilab's Education Office in 2005 after working over 30 years in Fermilab's Computing Sector. During her time in the Education Office, she primarily worked on web content and database development and was key in establishing the e-Labs that so many of our QuarkNet teachers and students use. Examples of her work include the animations found in the e-Lab resources (must log in to view this page), such as Classroom Cosmic Ray Detector (Adobe Flash required) and Data Acquisition Card (Adobe Flash required). You can read more about Liz's extensive career in this Fermilab article. We thank Liz for all of her contributions to QuarkNet and beyond; she will be missed!

Liz Quigg retired on Dec. 7 after 43 years at FNAL.

 

News from QuarkNet Central
We've recently received good news from a couple of our centers that call for congratulations. From our Notre Dame center, Bremen (Indiana) High School senior Emma Hundt recently was awarded the prestigious Lilly Scholarship that includes full tuition for four years to any school in Indiana. This past summer, Emma worked in the student research program through QuarkNet at Notre Dame. Another bit of good news comes from our Queensborough Community College Center, where student David Buitrago recently won the QCC Research Student of the Year with his work using a QuarkNet cosmic ray muon detector. For winning, he will receive an all-expenses paid trip to present at an undergraduate research conference in Texas. Feel free to check out David's poster. Congratulations to both Emma and David!    

Hot off the press: Here's the most recent International Masterclass Circular with information about adding a profile of your institute to the IMC website, Masterclass and the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and the opportunity to still sign up for IMC18.

 

QuarkNet Nuts and Bolts
Ever wonder what the difference is between a Level 1 activity and a Level 2 activity in our Data Portfolio? We now have level descriptions available at the top of the Data Portfolio to explain, along with some sample pathways that offer suggestions for navigating along a particular strand in the portfolio.

 

 

 

Physics Experiment Roundup
The Fermilab Accelerator Science and Technology (FAST) facility recently hit a double milestone as a beam of electrons was ramped up to 300 MeV. Over at CERN, the LHC was powered down on December 4 for the season for regularly scheduled maintenance and upgrades. Before powering down, new techniques for increasing luminosity were tested with an eye on LHC's successor, the High-Luminosity LHC, scheduled to start operation in 2026. 

 

 

Resources
Have a question for Fermilab? Get out your "original social media" (amateur radio) now through December 17 and you may get your question answered! Read astrophysicist and author Ethan Siegel's article on how neutrinos could help solve the greatest open questions in physics. Lastly, check out the 2017 Fermilab Physics Slam, where five contestants have just ten minutes each to fill in a general audience on a research topic. This year's contestants were five students from the Illinois Math and Science Academy, who each partnered with a Fermilab scientist in order to present their topic. 

 

Just for Fun
Where can you now see Bill Nye the Science Guy's lab coat? Try the Smithsonian. And another tweet, this time from the LHC's ALICE Experiment, verifying the beam is indeed down for the season. And check out this record-breaking rainbow, lasting about nine hours.

 

 

 

 

QuarkNet Staff:
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu