Friday Flyer - May 27, 2022
The Friday Flyer will be on hiatus until September 2022. This is the last issue of the 2021-22 academic year. We hope to see you at a workshop this summer!
Spotlight on the University of Oklahoma QuarkNet Center
Oklahoma's two QuarkNet centers — the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University — take turns hosting summer teacher workshops each year. Summer 2021 was the University of Oklahoma's turn, so teachers met once again in person on the campus of OU in Norman after the virtual meeting held in 2020. John Stupak, mentor for the OU QuarkNet Center, worked with QuarkNet staff to develop a three-day ATLAS Data workshop held in July 2021, which included an analysis of ATLAS data, classroom activities from the Data Activities Portfolio, and a discussion about plans for classroom implementation. LHC Fellow Susan Wetzler joined to help facilitate the workshop, and OSU mentor Joe Haley joined for a day as well, and brought along a cloud chamber. Looking ahead to summer 2022, plans are in the works for a workshop at the OSU campus in Stillwater.
News from QuarkNet Central
Mentors and lead teachers: think summer. Summer is quickly approaching, and your QuarkNet staff is here to help in planning your summer workshop. As mentioned above, there are a variety of national workshops that QuarkNet staff and/or fellows can lead at your center.
Conferences for professional development. A couple of great conferences to consider are the AAPT Summer Meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from July 9-13 or the NSTA National Conference in Chicago from July 21-23. As of today, the early bird registration rate for the AAPT Summer Meeting expires on June 1, so register soon!
Data Camp and Coding Camp. Coding Camp has now grown into two separate experiences: Coding Camp 1 is a virtual experience open to all QuarkNet teachers, while Coding Camp 2 is an in-person experience that digs deeper into coding and analysis techniques. Click here to learn more and to apply. Applications are due May 29. Data Camp is scheduled to be in person from July 10-15. We choose participants from a list of QuarkNet teachers nominated by their mentors, so if you are interested in attending Data Camp this summer, please contact your mentor. The deadline is May 29. Spots are filling up quickly for these experiences, so act fast if interested!
Physics Experiment Roundup
Learn how the revamped LHC will hunt for new physics in this article from Nature.
From the ALICE collaboration at CERN: Check out this article on the first direct observation of the dead-cone effect. (Here's the full paper published in Nature.) From the ATLAS collaboration: A search for heavy new particles. Physicist Tommaso Dorigo writes about two two-sigma signals from CMS data in this Science 2.0 article.
From Quanta Magazine: a re-write of a fundamental law and "Will the James Webb Telescope Reveal Another Earth?" From Physics: "Turning Back Time on Space" and "Physics Scratches a Philosopher's Itch."
Resources
The May 2022 edition of The Physics Teacher is out and contains several articles including these freebies: "Vertical Launch of a Grappling Hook," "Visualizing Double-Slit Interference on a Shoestring," "Putting Potential at the Core of Teaching Electric Circuits," "A Tale of Two Transformations," and "Fermi Questions."
What is energy? Don Lincoln sheds some light on this question in his latest video, just out today. From Symmetry: "What's Up with the W Boson Mass?" From minutephysics: "Most Collisions are Secretly in One Dimension." (H/T: Marge Bardeen)
Here are a couple of recent public lectures recorded from Fermilab: One from Deborah Harris, Ph.D. called, "MINERvA: I Can't Believe We Built the Whole Thing" and another from Boaz Klima, Ph.D. on peer review and publication.
Just for Fun
Let's see how long it takes you to figure out the theme of this week's Fun ...
We start off with a little light reading: "Fluid Dynamics of Clouds." Not fun enough, you say?! Then check out "A Year of Weather in 2021" from the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites; notice how the clouds trace the fluid flow of the atmosphere. We continue with "A Celebration of Clouds" from the folks at NASA's Earth Observatory.
Not quite hands-on enough for you? How about this or that? Or you could build your own cloud chamber, or just sit back and watch this cloud chamber in action at the Pic du Midi Observatory in France, back in 2012. And this seems appropriate.
Perhaps for dinner one evening this weekend you could whip up a batch of cloud eggs, followed by dessert.
Lastly, we figure it's important to end this final Friday Flyer of this school year with a little xkcd, even if it breaks from the theme: "Deep End" and "Voyager Wires."
QuarkNet Staff
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Spencer Pasero: spasero@fnal.gov
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu