QuarkNet 2022 Summer Workshop for Teachers
June 12, 2022
With the support of the QuarkNet leadership and Rice's Physics & Astronomy department the yearly QuarkNet workshop took place in June 2022.
Over the span of a full week from June 6-10, we were able to about a dozen teachers from various campus across Greater Houston. Equally exciting is that we saw a record number of five QuarkNet fellows travel to Houston to lead a great set of mini-workshops as well as a couple of fellows that joined remotely. A special shout-out goes to Houston center's lead teacher Mary Yarbray and QuarkNet fellow Shane Wood who both have been instrumental in bringing together an exciting program and great group of enthusiastic teachers.
This year's program saw three components, all new, that included a coding workshop, a neutrino workshop, and a brand-new Higgs@10 workshop on the imminent 10yr anniversary of the discovery announcement of the Higgs boson. With the introduction to coding, using Python-based code in Jupyter notebooks, the teachers learned about exciting new ways in which students could deeper engage with physics measurements (or simulations). The neutrino workshop further build on top of this by pulling in real MINERvA data and manipulating these data to learn more about the observation of neutrino oscillations. Finally, the Higgs@10 workshop allowed everybody to re-familiarize eachother with the powerful iSpy environment in which teachers and students can pull in real CMS or ATLAS data. For this workshow, these curated data sets provided great opportunities to observe the Higgs peak arise from an analysis of 4-lepton LHC p+p events.
In addition to the mini-workshops, faculty and scientists from both UH and Rice gave hour-long lectures on a range of topics that included an overview of exciting new detector upgrades in anticipation for LHC Run3 (prof. Ecklund), how heavy-ion collisions and neutron-star collisions related (prof. Ratti), what we've learned in the past 10 years since the Higgs discovery (prof. Acosta), and how nuclear physics is applied in radiation therapies (prof. Yepes).
We are very grateful to the QuarkNet leadership for their support - specifically to Shane, Chris, Adam, Mike-1, Mike-2, Maria, and Ken! We thank the Rice Physics & Astronomy Dept. for its in-kind contributions, not in the least providing lunch to all that attended (thank your Barbara!).
Over the span of a full week from June 6-10, we were able to about a dozen teachers from various campus across Greater Houston. Equally exciting is that we saw a record number of five QuarkNet fellows travel to Houston to lead a great set of mini-workshops as well as a couple of fellows that joined remotely. A special shout-out goes to Houston center's lead teacher Mary Yarbray and QuarkNet fellow Shane Wood who both have been instrumental in bringing together an exciting program and great group of enthusiastic teachers.
This year's program saw three components, all new, that included a coding workshop, a neutrino workshop, and a brand-new Higgs@10 workshop on the imminent 10yr anniversary of the discovery announcement of the Higgs boson. With the introduction to coding, using Python-based code in Jupyter notebooks, the teachers learned about exciting new ways in which students could deeper engage with physics measurements (or simulations). The neutrino workshop further build on top of this by pulling in real MINERvA data and manipulating these data to learn more about the observation of neutrino oscillations. Finally, the Higgs@10 workshop allowed everybody to re-familiarize eachother with the powerful iSpy environment in which teachers and students can pull in real CMS or ATLAS data. For this workshow, these curated data sets provided great opportunities to observe the Higgs peak arise from an analysis of 4-lepton LHC p+p events.
In addition to the mini-workshops, faculty and scientists from both UH and Rice gave hour-long lectures on a range of topics that included an overview of exciting new detector upgrades in anticipation for LHC Run3 (prof. Ecklund), how heavy-ion collisions and neutron-star collisions related (prof. Ratti), what we've learned in the past 10 years since the Higgs discovery (prof. Acosta), and how nuclear physics is applied in radiation therapies (prof. Yepes).
We are very grateful to the QuarkNet leadership for their support - specifically to Shane, Chris, Adam, Mike-1, Mike-2, Maria, and Ken! We thank the Rice Physics & Astronomy Dept. for its in-kind contributions, not in the least providing lunch to all that attended (thank your Barbara!).