Friday Flyer - October 30, 2015
Spotlight on the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez QuarkNet Center: The UPRM crew generally meets during the academic year as its mentors are often at Fermilab in the summer. UPRM QuarkNet teachers leave their mark in the summer anyhow, with several having participated in TRAC and Data Camp at Fermilab and at HST at CERN. A few weeks ago, they had one of their weekend workshops, this time focused on cosmic ray detectors. The highlight was an experiment with two detectors to see if the muon rate changed on different floors of the Physics building. Learn more about the workshop in English or Spanish.
News from QuarkNet Central: Reminders abound . . .
Registration for International Masterclasses 2016 is in full swing. The Doodle polls are open until November 18; after that, contact Ken Cecire directly. Masterclass leaders, the circular with useful links is online in PDF form.
Please remember to credit where credit is due to our program and its funders when presenting work relating to QuarkNet by simply placing the appropriate logos on your presentation.
International Cosmic Day (November 5) is upon us. If you have a detector and think you can join in, please sign up now.
Mentors: Have you submitted your QuarkNet center annual report yet? If not, it is sort of overdue. Fortunately, it is easy to do. We even have a "how-to" article about it.
If there's something strange in the e-Lab neighborhood, who you gonna call? If your detector's count don't look good, who you gonna call? The QuarkNet e-Lab Help Desk, of course! It's at the life ring in the top right of any QuarkNet e-Lab, just left of the pencil icon. If you use the Help Desk, send Bob a separate e-mail to let him know how it might be improved.
Physics Experiment Roundup: U.S. particle physics is already going strong on the neutrino front. Now nuclear physics is stepping up to the matter-antimatter frontier. At the LHC, planning is underway to get more collisions per second, giving more data, through a luminosity upgrade.
Resources: Here is a campfire story for physics students: superclusters don't exist. (The article comes with a cool video, of, sort, of nothing, in that it is a numerical simulation.) Another mysterious idea is supersymmetry, which particle physicist Scarlet Norberg explains with the help of board games.
Just for Fun: Thinking about Halloween? Make a physics jack-o'-lantern! Not thinking about Halloween because you only love your collider? Take the Particle Physics Personality Quiz!
QuarkNet Staff Teachers:
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Bob Peterson: rspete@fnal.gov
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu