The Case of the Hidden Neutrino

Students use momentum conservation to examine the decay of top-antitop pairs to determine what is missing from the event.

Mean Lifetime Part 1: Dice

Rolling dice serves as the model for decaying particles.

Shuffling the Particle Deck

Teams of students organize cards depicting fundamental particles based on their characteristics. This activity is a foundation for learning about the Standard Model and parallels the methods used by scientists to organize the elements into the period table.

Mean Lifetime Part 2: Cosmic Muons

Students learn how physicists measure muon lifetime.

Dice, Histograms & Probability

Students roll dice, record the resulting individual values as well as the sum of the values, create histograms of the data and develop insight into the concept of “degrees of freedom." 

Rolling with Rutherford

Students use statistics to make an indirect measurement they can easily confirm.

Making it ‘Round the Bend - Qualitative

Students explore the effects of electric and magnetic fields on particles. 

Calculate the Top Quark Mass

Students use conservation laws and vector addition to calculate the top mass from event displays.

Calculate the Z Mass

Students use conservation laws and vector addition to calculate the Z mass from event displays.