FSU QuarkNet: Year Summary 2015
FSU’s QuarkNet center, now in its 16th year, presently has about 20 regular members, mainly from Leon County, but also a few from neighboring counties. During this last year we had a few meetings of “TeachMeet Tally,” a group loosely affiliated with QuarkNet, organized by Adam LaMee. These meetings are informal, monthly social events held for educators to share proven teaching practices.
Two of our regulars, Zondra Clayton and Karen Brown, were selected to attend a Data Camp at Fermilab.
Our main event of the year was our QuarkNet summer workshop at FSU, 6 to 10 July 2015. It was attended by 15 school teachers (http://www.hep.fsu.edu/~wahl/Quarknet/summer2015/people.html ), plus one master teacher from FSU-Teach (Logan Chalfant).
The program (http://www.hep.fsu.edu/~wahl/Quarknet/summer2015/agenda.html ) included a three-day workshop on cosmic rays led by Robert Franckowiak from QuarkNet. In addition to the cosmic-ray workshop activities, we had various lectures by FSU Physics Department faculty: Introduction to Cosmic Rays (Horst Wahl), Introduction to Quantum Theory (Horst Wahl), Highlights of Particle Physics (Laura Reina), Introduction to Astrophysics (Jeremiah Murphy) and Introduction to Condensed Matter Physics (Christianne Beekman), as well as a number of potential class room activities which were led by teachers who are members of the local QN center (Brian McClain, JaSun Burdick, Adam LaMee).
Unfortunately, Adam LaMee has taken a new job as Instructional Specialist at the University of Central Florida and will therefore no longer be available for us. His departure leaves a big hole and we’ll have to identify somebody to fill this void.