Friday Flyer - April 13, 2018
Spotlight on International Muon Week 2018
During International Muon Week in March, a dozen high school groups used their QuarkNet cosmic ray detectors to measure the speed of muons. They each collected at least two sets of muon data with pairs of scintillation counters arranged with a vertical separation from zero to two meters. Comparing the time between counters for all sets of counter separation, groups were able to calculate the average speed of the muons. This is a technique similar to police in a helicopter measuring a car's average speed by timing the car's travel between two marks on a highway, except with precision of a few nanoseconds (billionths of a second) in the case of the cosmic ray detectors. At every QuarkNet site, a ticket was warranted because the muons' speeds were measured to be very close to the speed of light. (Thanks to QuarkNet staff Mark Adams for contributing this week's Spotlight.)
News from QuarkNet Central
The only news this week is a reminder for mentors to send in any nomination for this summer's Data Camp if you have not yet done so. Feel free to contact Jeremy, Ken, or Shane if you have questions.
Physics Experiment Roundup
Fermilab's MiniBooNE experiment delivers an unprecedented measurement while the ADMX (Axion Dark Matter Experiment) reaches a technological breakthrough in its search for the axion. See how Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment uses "clock blinding" in order to prevent scientist bias. If you need a reminder on the physics of the g-2 experiment, check out this video. Over at CERN, the first test collisions of 2018 have now taken place at the LHC; an important step toward taking serious scientific data in this latest run.
Resources
Symmetry on how to make a Higgs boson. Don Lincoln explains the Twin Paradox, this time without any mathematics. Learn more about listening for dark matter with ADMX.
Just for Fun
An "eggstraordinary" discovery announced on April 1 (then updated on April 2), just in case you missed it!
QuarkNet Staff:
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Deborah Roudebush: droudebush@cox.net
Jeremy Smith: jsmith10@bcps.org
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu