Friday Flyer - April 28, 2017

Spotlight on Teaching and Learning Fellows: The Teaching and Learning fellows work on two important QuarkNet missions: promoting the professional development of QuarkNet teachers through the annual Data Camp, held for a week each summer at Fermilab, and through the development of new QuarkNet student activities for the Data Portfolio. Data Camp is the most successful and longest-lived QuarkNet workshop. An evolution from the Lead Teacher Institutes and QuarkNet Boot Camp that came before it, Data Camp incorporates both the deep dive into CMS data that is its hallmark and teacher exploration of activities from the Data Portfolio, as well as the excitement of Fermilab. This year, Data Camp runs July 16–21. If you haven't been, you should; talk with your QuarkNet mentor.

And Jeremy Smith, Jodi Hansen, Gerard Gagnon, Adam LaMee, and Deborah Roudebush, take a bow for all you do. 

News from QuarkNet Central: A tale of two seasons starts with a new event this spring: the first-ever QuarkNet e-Lab Poster Challenge! Encourage your students to do meaningful studies and make posters in the Cosmic Ray e-Lab, the CMS e-Lab, or the LIGO e-Lab between now and the end of May. On June 1, the QuarkNet staff will look at all the posters registered in the competition and choose 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, judged based on the rubrics found in the e-Labs, the science, and how interesting it is. Prizes and certificates will be awarded accordingly. For more information, go to the QuarkNet e-Lab Poster Challenge web page.

This summer, QuarkNet has a new cosmic ray project to measure muon rates during the upcoming solar eclipse on August 21 that may be of interest to teachers and students. Contact Mark Adams if you have questions or if you'd like to participate.

Speaking of summer, did we mention Data Camp July 16–21 and how you should talk with your mentor? We did? Good.

Physics Experiment Roundup: The ALICE experiment at the LHC has found something unexpected in proton-proton collisions. Follow the mystery. More about it, this time in symmetry. Same source: here is an experiment you and your students can do with your classroom cosmic ray detector.

Resources: Read about the benefits of basic research in symmetry. Fermilab physicist and masterclass moderator Mike Albrow writes about how anyone who uses GPS should care about general relativity.

Just for Fun: Fermilab baby bison and xkcd on geology

QuarkNet Staff:
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu