Spotlight on the Brookhaven National Laboratory – Stony Brook University QuarkNet Center
The BNL-SB center is nearly as old as QuarkNet itself. Shortly after QuarkNet started in 1999, both Stony Brook and Brookhaven Lab joined. Over the years, the two centers merged, and Brookhaven mentor Helio Takai took the lead. This year, Helio retired from Brookhaven and took a new position at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (not that we think this is the last we've heard from him). Two new mentors stepped up this autumn: Ketevi Assamagan from Brookhaven and Dmitiri Tsybychev from Stony Brook. So did Michael Rijssenbeek, who was one of the original Stony Brook mentors. These three ATLAS physicists, along with lead teacher Gillian Winters, are keeping to some well-worn, successful pathways and forging new ones as well. The new team is impressive (Google them!); the teacher group continues to be strong, and the plans are solid. The future of QuarkNet between the Great South Bay and the Long Island Sound is promising.
News from QuarkNet Central
Ramp-up for International Masterclasses 2019 is well underway. The Doodle registration polls for CERN videoconferences close today. The deadline has been extended for Fermilab videoconferences to December 11. Read all about it and about masterclasses for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, in the latest IMC circular, just out today.
Physics Experiment Roundup
Precision, precision. Physics Today reports on the most precise SI units ever as well as more exact measurements of electrons in the ACME experiment. Science News reports in a similar vein on the proton mass and where it comes from. And it takes quantum-level precision, according to symmetry, to hunt for axions.
In LHC news, symmetry tells us about keeping the LHC cold and CERN Bulletin describes the last week of the heavy ion run before the big shutdown.
Resources
A picture is worth . . . well, anyway, symmetry has great images of ProtoDUNE for us. We will leave the word count in the article to you. Fermilab tells us how useful electron beams are. Increasing the words and pictures a bit more, here is an older but nice CERN video on the Standard Model.
Just for Fun
We mentioned the ACME experiment above. What we saved is that it has the best logo ever. Here is a sort-of-physics-video to go with the theme. And whatever xkcd says, this did not happen with that upgrade of SI units.
QuarkNet Staff:
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu