University of Cincinnati QuarkNet Center - 2025 Annual Report

The University of Cincinnati QuarkNet Center hosted a 3-day teacher workshop on 28-30 July 2025. The workshop was attended by 8 teachers from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area; Ken Cecire and QuarkNet LHC Fellow Alison Bulson also joined us. In addition to lectures on the Standard Model and the LHCb detector, the group worked on Lifetime and Quark Workbench activities, and on the LHCb Masterclass to study the lifetime of the D0 meson. 
UC postdoc Dr Michael Wilkinson showed FeynHex, a set of 3D-printed tiles to use as a teaching tool for Feynman diagrams, co-developed with UC Prof Phil Ilten. UC graduate Dr. Ahmed Youssef demonstrated his  recently-developed virtual reality (VR) tool for visualisation of simulated LHC collisions, using a VR headset. A cloud chamber demonstration was accompanied by UC undergraduate Rosario Zappala who had built his own from scratch for a senior project.  Four High School students who had been working on a summer HEP research internship with UC Prof Mike Sokoloff presented their work.

University Mentor Conor Henderson also gave a 1hr+ presentation on LHC physics to QuarkNet Coding Camp 1 on 22 July 2025, invited by local Cincinnati teacher carol Burns who was co-organizing the camp as a Coding Fellow.