Friday Flyer - October 17, 2014
Spotlight on Black Hills State University: BHSU QuarkNet Center had a busy summer. For six years they have focused on using the cosmic ray muon detector and e-Lab. This year seven teachers and three students gathered all six of the detectors including equipment from several teachers who could not attend but wanted to benefit from a group calibration. The experienced group knew the steps to plateau and adjust rates so all the detectors matched. This they did without delay, so all the counters responded exactly the same under the same conditions. Then they moved on to joint studies and advanced topics. The group installed the new Java interface, EQUIP, to talk to the DAQ, and this met enthusiastic support considering how difficult HyperTerminal has been. One of the high school students even figured out how to get EQUIP to work on a Linux system. The group examined the new blessing routines and attempted to bless some of their data. The teachers designed a classroom activity using the detector and e-Lab after first running the investigation from a student perspective. Those activities can be seen at the QuarkNet website: /node/241/recent-content
BHSU also hosted the QuarkNet Virtual Center for their traveling bi-annual workshop. This center, too, looked at EQUIP and blessing under the guidance of Jim Stith, BHSU teacher and e-Lab fellow; Mike Wadness lead an ILC workshop. The Virtual workshop finished with a tour of Sanford Lab.
Three students attended the six-week Summer Research Student Program lead by Steve Gabriel. The students assisted in the installation of remote control underground monitors at Sanford Lab. Lastly, the big accolade for BHSU teacher LuAnn Lindskov who was selected as the 2014 South Dakota Teacher of the Year.
News from QuarkNet Central: International Cosmic Day was held on October 8. According to the Google map, 13 QuarkNet sites participated with 19 other international sites to do their own experiments in nearby universities, research institutions or even in their classrooms and share results.
Registration for International Masterclasses is now officially open. You can find links to the doodles and more information at /content/videoconferences-2015. Questions? Ask Ken Cecire.
There is a new post for QuarkNet an der Elbe, right under the Friday Flyer in the At Work section of the QuarkNet site.
Resources: Check out these sobering lessons learned from a teacher who shadowed two students for two days: Lessons Learned
FYI: Many of Marie Curie's personal belongings, like her 100-year-old notebook, are still too radioactive to touch. (from FACTUALLY)
QuarkNet Staff Teachers:
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Tom Jordan: jordant@fnal.gov
Bob Peterson: rspete@fnal.gov