2023-2024 Annual Report from UCSC/SCIPP QuarkNet Center

In 2024 we continued outreach from the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics to regional high schools in central California and to students online. The QuarkNet Center programs were coordinated by faculty mentor Jason Nielsen and SCIPP Outreach Coordinator Laura Bakken, assisted by undergraduate intern Natalie Hultgren. Jason participated in the Bay Area QuarkNet workshop at LBNL in February 2024.

The annual Particle Physics Masterclass was held at SCIPP on Saturday, March 9, 2024 with a maximum capacity of 42 students. The students followed introductory particle physics lectures from theorists and experimentalists before using Hypatia to search for lepton and photon pairs in the ATLAS Z Path. Students attending in person participated in a lab tour and cloud chamber demonstration with researchers. The class ended with a videoconference with Fermilab.

As a follow-up with Masterclass teachers, we visited the Physics class at Santa Cruz High on October 26, 2023. A small group of graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty discussed particle physics and led the BAMA activity in the classroom. This activity went very well, and we followed up with another visit to Scotts Valley High on May 22, 2024.

We started some planning for other activities last year, such as a hands-on electronics activity and an astroparticle data analysis activity, but these are still in the early stages of development.