Friday Flyer - March 31, 2017

Spotlight on Purdue University Northwest QuarkNet Center: Purdue University Calumet and Purdue University Northwest have joined forces. Result: same great QuarkNet center, new name. Purdue Northwest is active both in summer workshops—last summer they took a dive into the LIGO e-Lab—and International Masterclasses. Their CMS masterclass is coming up on April 8. Mentor Neeti Parashar not only organizes and encourages an active teacher group, but is herself a masterclass videoconference moderator.

News from QuarkNet Central: The news is: There is not much news. International Muon Week wrapped up. Masterclasses are about 2/3 complete and humming along. (And we have the tweets to prove it, like this one and this one.) More coming for spring and summer? You bet . . . Stay tuned!

Physics Experiment Roundup: If two charged particles exchange one photon, then maybe they can exchange, um, two photons. And maybe we're observing it. The important Moriond physics conference is winding up; here are results presented by CMS.

Resources: We start with two videos from Fermilab: Our own Marge Bardeen (QuarkNet Spokesperson) gives an education and outreach history lesson and Don Lincoln has a strong take on the weak interaction. Don is also taking on even bigger questions with his article on a theory of everything in The Physics Teacher. In symmetry, learn how to make a discovery. (Easy! Fun! Free trip to Stockholm!)

Just for Fun: Perimeter Institute encourages us to tune our students into their How to Bake Pi webcast. (And at what temperature do you bake one pi? 180 degrees, of course.) And . . . are you smarter than a 7th grader? Check out the poster and plot made by Lancaster, Pennsylvania middle school student Gavin Wang for research done with a QuarkNet cosmic ray detector. Nice work, Gavin!

Hold it! What about April Fools' Day? It is tomorrow. Check your calendar app. Fermilab is, however, proactive as usual.

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