Friday Flyer - September 7, 2018
Welcome to the first Friday Flyer of this academic year!
Spotlight on the Black Hills State University QuarkNet Center
This summer's teacher meeting was hosted by Peggy Norris, Education and Outreach Deputy Director at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) near Lead, South Dakota. During the first two days of the meeting, teachers piloted a neutrino workshop in development, culminating in the analysis of neutrino interaction data from Fermilab's MINERvA detector. On day three, teachers toured SURF's wastewater treatment plant, a facility that treats the water pumped continually from the mine to prevent flooding of the underground research facility, the future home of DUNE's far detector. During the final day of the meeting, teachers organized and ran the QuarkNet booth at SURF's Neutrino Day 2018, giving the public a chance to learn about particle physics research with hands-on activities.
News from QuarkNet Central
We received some great news this summer from the National Science Foundation that the QuarkNet grant has been renewed for another five years. The funding level is less than in previous years but is enough for a viable teacher program including Data Camp, International Masterclasses, and workshops at the 50+ centers. Mitch Wayne, the grant's principal investigators (PI), University of Notre Dame, will be in touch with mentors soon to discuss in more detail the changes that this new grant brings. We look forward to work with our network of mentors and teachers that participate in our teacher professional development program.
Physics Experiment Roundup
Much has happened in the world of physics experiments since the last Friday Flyer. Here's a taste . . . The IceCube neutrino experiment announced the detection of a high-energy cosmic neutrino and traced it back to a distant blazar, ushering in a new era of multi-messenger astronomy. ATLAS and CMS jointly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson decaying into bottom quarks, thought to be the most common way for the Higgs to decay. The 20-meter-long ICARUS neutrino detector was recently installed at Fermilab, bringing it one step closer to taking data. Check out the video of the installation of ICARUS at Fermilab.
Resources
Fermilab's Don Lincoln on how something can travel faster than light without breaking the laws of physics. Ride along on symmetry's Tour du LHC to learn more about some of the people and experiments located at CERN. Find out about event displays that LHC physicists dream about in this LHC-watcher's field guide. And learn to sort out all of those particle names with another one of Don Lincoln's videos.
Just for Fun
Vote for your favorite Big Physics pictures of the year in the 2018 Global Physics competition, open now through September 16. Winners will be announced on October 1. And finally, when a degree in physics becomes a form of rebellion.
QuarkNet Staff:
Mark Adams: adams@fnal.gov
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu