Friday Flyer - February 19, 2016
Spotlight on the Colorado State University QuarkNet Center: In its fourth year, the CSU center is relatively new. Dr. Bob Wilson, Cherie Bornhorst and about six local teachers have learned about cosmic rays, building and deploying cosmic ray detectors, worked with LHC data, and involved students through the study of cosmic ray detectors and participation in the masterclass. During the summer 2015 workshop, with the help of Ken Cecire and Dave Trapp, participants took advantage of local elevation changes to study changes in cosmic ray muon flux with elevation from 4.900 feet (in Fort Collins) to 12.100 feet (in Rocky Mountain National Park).
News from QuarkNet Central: Get the word about your upcoming masterclass out to your students! QuarkNet has color posters you can print in 11x17 or 8.5x11. Put one up in your school—or more than one. And send word out to your local media by adapting from the IMC press release template.
It's not too early to begin planning summer workshops! Mentors and lead teachers, consider offering your local teachers an LHC data workshop, CMS e-Lab workshop, or cosmic workshop. These tried and tested two- or three-day workshops give teachers a chance to try out classroom activities, work with real data, and collaborate with other teachers in order to plan classroom implementation. QuarkNet staff or fellows are available to travel to your center to facilitate one of these workshops. For more information or to plan one of these workshops, contact your QuarkNet Central main point of contact.
Physics Experiment Roundup: Need to rent space a half-mile underground? You're in luck! The Soudan Underground Mine in northern Minnesota will have two large underground spaces soon available as the two experiments that have been there for years—MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) and CDMS (Cryogenic Dark Matter Search)—wind down operation. While some experiments are winding down, others are just ramping up! The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) now has a working prototype running that researchers are testing as they plan to build the huge liquid argon detector a mile underground in South Dakota's Sanford Underground Research Facility. For more . . . check out this recent symmetry article about DUNE.
Resources: With just a little over a week since the LIGO announcement on the detection of gravitational waves, many teachers are looking for resources to help explain this discovery to their students. Ken Cecire has put together a page with links to all sorts of resources on gravitational waves . . . check it out!
Interested in running the Eratosthenes experiment with your students on the spring equinox? Register online to have your students work with others at a similar longitude.
Just for Fun: Are you a fan of Star Wars and Calvin and Hobbes? Then check out these creations by artist Brian Kesinger where The Force Awakens is reimagined as Calvin and Hobbes. And . . . a little wave-particle humor brought to you by xkcd.
QuarkNet Staff:
Mark Adams: MarkRAdams74@gmail.com
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu