Notre Dame Annual Report 2024
The Notre Dame QuarkNet Center continued its work with the Cosmic Watch as soon as summer 2023 came to a close. Resident QuarkNet staff member Ken Cecire visited Watervliet High School in September to try out a lab activity with Caroline Fletcher and her students. He also visited Canterbury High School in Fort Wayne in October to help Rebekah Randall and her students prepare for International Cosmic Day with the QuarkNet Cosmic Ray Detector. In November, two Notre Dame QuarkNet schools - St. Joseph High School with teacher Chris Culver and Winamac Community High School with teacher Jeremy Wegner - participated in World Wide Data Day while Canterbury and Winamac also participated in International Cosmic Day.
Notre Dame QuarkNet teachers and students ramped up in early 2024 for International Masterclasses. Teachers and students from Watervliet High School, St. Joseph High School, and Canterbury High School came to Notre Dame to participate in an ATLAS masterclass and videoconference on March 9. Students from Winamac High School came on March 12 for a Belle II masterclass; their videoconference with KEK and Honjo Waseda Senior High School was on Thursday March 21. The teacher at Honjo Waseda, Miki Ohtsuka, had participated in Notre Dame summer research in 2022.
The summer 2024 research program was very full, with Pat Mooney leading overall. Research groups:
Highlights:
- Construction of 20 new Cosmic Watch kits
- Two balloon launches with mentors Brian Davis and Ilan Levine of Indiana University South Bend to take data with the Cosmic Watch
- Two Elkhart High School teachers and one Watervliet High School student helped to prepare, test, and characterize quartz glass capillary light-sensitive instruments for use in a test beam at CERN that was run in early October, 2024.
- Spark chamber refurbishment porceeded apace and continues into the fall
- Another successful Notre Dame QuarkNet picnic.
In addition, Jeremy Wegner, as an LHC fellow, traveled to Virginia Tech to help with their center workshop and Dan Kallenberg, a Cosmic Ray fellow, went to Colorado State to help them assemble and test Cosmic Watches.
Images:
