NIU Annual Report

The NIU Quarknet Group had a diverse set of learning opportunities this year, filled with many learning styles and wide breadth of information considerations.  The mentor and Teacher Leader of the NIU group, Prof. Chakraborty, Elisa Gatz, respectively, had all rooms, equipment, snacks, and schedule prepared for a highly successful 2016 program.  Students and teachers participated in Quarknet sponsored Masterclass on March 3, 2016.  The Summer Program followed Masterclass on, June 6-10, with 3 teachers and 21 students. Student and teachers received direct instruction and modeling from several physics professors within the NIU community.  The first day all participants were welcomed by Prof. Lurio, the physics department head.  Other presentations included HEP, Cosmology and Cosmic Ray Connections by professor Eads.  Prof. Adelman presented Elementary Particle Physics at the Energy Frontier.  Prof. Chakraborty presented an HEP  link to real life presentation called, HEP research and inpact on our everyday lives.  The video portions to accompany these presentations were made available to teachers and students via dropbox and online at NIU site for future study and use.  Students had numerous opportunities to design, implement, and collect CRMD data on their own experiments.  Student results were summarized and shared during a culminating activity at the end of their research time.