Friday Flyer - May 5, 2017

Spotlight on the LIGO e-Lab: Perhaps you have some time after AP, IB, or state testing for your students to explore a topic that relates to or extends beyond your curriculum. Consider utilizing a Cosmic Ray, CMS, or the LIGO e-Lab to structure this exploration. Gravitational waves produce only extremely small vibrations in the interferometer arms of the LIGO detectors in Louisiana and Washington State, so it is important to isolate out these seismic background vibrations. The detectors used to measure the seismic background generate the data in the LIGO e-Lab that students can use to study wave propagation, earthquakes, and even simple x = vt problems. Students can create an online poster in the e-Lab that they can submit in the QuarkNet e-Lab Poster Challenge! Contact Ken or Shane with any questions.

News from QuarkNet Central: News this week consists of a reminder for this spring (e-Lab poster challenge) and this summer (cosmic ray eclipse project): 
QuarkNet's first-ever e-Lab Poster Challenge takes place this month. 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.

Physics Experiment Roundup: The LHC starts up again after a 17-week-long technical stop. CERN's CAST experiment announces results demonstrating how "no evidence" can be informative and serves as a reference point. Recent findings from the Fermi LAT collaboration indicates that the mysterious gamma-ray glow at the center of the Milky Way is likely not caused by dark matter.

Resources: Learn about Galileo, Faraday, and 18 other physicists who revolutionized our understanding of the world, according to Business Insider. Read about how dark matter became a particle in this article from the CERN Courier. And finally, Neil deGrasse Tyson on why dark matter matters.

Just for Fun: On the Laws of Physics, courtesy of xkcd

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