TTU Annual Workshop 2021

The Texas Tech University CMS group sponsored their annual workshop the TTU Particle Physics Lab in Lubbock, Texas at the Reese Campus this year the week of June 29-July 2, 2021.  This is the 4th year TTU has been a part of the national QuarkNet Program.  The annual workshop included 3 teachers, 2 have been in the program for 4 years and one is his 3rd year.

All 3 teachers have an extensive background in physics and are from the same public school, Frenship ISD in Wolfforth, Texas.

The workshop began with day 1 touring the particle physics lab at the Reese Campus and learning about the particle physics projects that are being conducted at this facility.  Day 2 was led by Dr. Whitbeck’s grad students, we worked on a weather station that can monitor conditions inside the clean rooms where they are trying to design and create silicon wafers with microchips to send to a project in CERN.  Day 3 was conducted by Shane Wood from Fermi Labs about “STEP UP” a program to get more girls involved in physics and research at school.  Encouraging female students to become more a part of future research and development. Day 4 was used to set up and troubleshoot our CMS detector at our local school, with a lecture that morning from Dr. Sungwon Lee who visited our facility.  That afternoon we met with the TTU Observatory Professor Dr. Villa Antoniou along with some of her grad students to tour the observatory and look at some of the projects being conducted at the facility.  Day 5 “July 6” was a virtual conference session to discuss the upcoming year and how to encourage our students to learn through potential research projects that could be student-led and guided.  As well as some great resources provided by Dr. Lee.  Dr. Lee encouraged us all to become involved in the upcoming Science Fair that will be conducted by TTU in the Spring of 2022.

Mentors: Dr. Sungwon Lee, Dr. Andrew Whitbeck

Submitted By: James Holloway 7/15/21