Friday Flyer - March18, 2016

Spotlight on QuarkNet, Notre Dame, and Chile: Recently, Pat Mooney, Ken Cecire and Chris Kolda, Physics Department Chair, retuned from a visit to Pontificia Universidad Catolica in Santiago, Chile. While in Chile, they built cosmic ray detectors and had masterclass-based workshops with a strong teacher group under the leadership of Catolica particle physicist Ben Koch and teacher leader Daniela Gayoso. (Some of our readers may remember Daniela from Data Camp 2014.) Pat facilitated a special section of the masterclass workshop for advanced teachers to create code in SciLab to analyze CMS J/Ψ dimuon data; Chris and Ken brought "masterclasses cortos" to three different high schools. The program, MICA III, is sponsored by a Notre Dame International Andronico Luksic grant to foster collaboration between Notre Dame and Catolica. Tomorrow, Notre Dame and Catolica will meet online for their third annual masterclass videoconference.

News from QuarkNet Central: We received a letter recently from the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth looking for instructors in physics and physics-related topics for their summer programs. Who better than QuarkNet teachers? If you are interested in applying, visit the website.

Physics Experiment Roundup: R-parity violations in CMS and b-jet forward-backward asymmetry in CDF (yes, they are still analyzing Tevatron data) are two ways there might be evidence contrary to the Standard Model. Result: Standard Model 2, Challengers 0. 

Resources: PHD TV goes all big astro with the videos Cosmic Inflation and Super Massive Black Holes. The BBC goes LHC.

Just for Fun: What's been going on with International Masterclasses? Look at the tweets at #LHCIMC16.

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