Friday Flyer - October 14, 2022
Spotlight on the University of Mississippi QuarkNet Center
The Ole Miss QuarkNet Center got off to a great start this year. New mentor Jake Bennett organized and the university hosted the 20th conference on Flavor Physics and CP violation (FPCP 2022) in May, and QuarkNet was part of it. Ken, Shane, and several fellows descended on Oxford to participate in a Belle II and MINERvA masterclass demonstration on that Friday afternoon. On Saturday, they helped Jake facilitate a teacher workshop. Lucien Cremaldi, Jake's Ole Miss QuarkNet predecessor and still active as a mentor, was also very involved. It was a great success and set the stage for a workshop later in the summer in which Jake and Lucien gave the teachers the opportunity to experiment with portable radiation detectors. They are planning another follow-up attached to the upcoming meeting of the Southeast Section of APS, also at Ole Miss.
News from QuarkNet Central
World Wide Data Day: Registration is now open for this year's W2D2, which will take place on Thursday, November 10. W2D2 is a chance to have a simplified masterclass experience in your school using authentic ATLAS or CMS data! Students can share results with their peers and with physicists from all over the world. And it all, from soup to nuts, takes only an integrated two hours or so. To learn more, check out the W2D2 pages. Have questions? Contact Ken or Shane.
International Cosmic Day: Registration is now open for this year's ICD, which will be held on Tuesday, November 22. Spend a day with cosmic rays and collaborate internationally! Learn more at the ICD website.
Dark Matter Days are on the way. Perimeter Institute has a livestream offering and there are more available worldwide. Don't be a WIMP - search them out!
Ask a Scientist: Fermilab will have a Virtual Ask-a-Scientist event on October 23. It is a great chance for your students to learn about the Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) and neutrino physics.
QuarkNet Educational Discussions: Teachers met via Zoom for the second QED meeting of the school year this past Wednesday, in which Charlie Payne showed what students can do with VPython. The next session will take place on Wednesday, November 2 at 7pm CT and is set to feature a presentation by Cardiff University astrophysicist Chris North. Want to learn more? Sign up and check the webpage!
International Masterclasses: The first Circular for IMC 2023 has hit the electronic presses!
Physics Experiment Roundup
Since Dark Energy Day is approaching, it is only fitting that we start with some dark energy news. Symmetry informs us that the Dark Energy Survey Instrument (DESI) in Arizona has recovered from fire and floods to be back on the air. And Fermilab News treats us to amazing (and quite luminous) images from the Dark Energy Camera.
Want good collisions? APS Physics tells us the way is to go retro.
At CERN, the LHC has restarted and millions celebrate. At least that is sort of how CERN Bulletin puts it.
Resources
On October 4, we all got a little more entangled with the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics. This year, it went to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for their work on Bell's Inequality (Quora) and quantum entanglement (ThoughtCo). Physics Today offers the Nobel news, explained and APS Physics explains even more. Want to understand what it is about? (Of course! We do too!) Try this discussion of quantum entanglement from CalTech Science Exchange and this video on Bell's Inequality by the Qiskit folks at IBM.
As for videos, Don Lincoln has a new one on what happens when you fall into a black hole. Physics Today reports on how the path of U.S. particle physics was charted in the Snowmass meeting last July and Marge Bardeen sends this update on MacArthur fellow Steven Prohira and his work on detecting neutrinos using radar.
Just for Fun
Two Friday Flyer reporters drove from Minneapolis to Sioux Falls today and autumn was in the air. So was pumpkin spice, which makes us think of the chemistry of pumpkin spice flavors (thanks, Chemical and Engineering News!) and, of course, how to make a pumpkin spice latte (thanks, Allrecipes!). The sharp-eyed journalists also noticed lots of pumpkins for sale at roadside spots, making them think, "projectiles" and thus about the important list of 2022 Pumpkin Chunkin Events and Festivals.
Here is xkcd on how a wing produces lift, sort of. Inspired by this, the FF design team came up with a vacuous diagram explaining computers.
QuarkNet Staff
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Spencer Pasero: spasero@fnal.gov
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu