QuarkNet Masterclass 2023
March 27, 2023
On Saturday, March 23, we welcomed more than 30 students and teachers from 8 high schools on our campus for the annual QuarkNet Master Class. Starting at 8h30am, we had a full day with a wide range of activities culminating in a Zoom call with particle physicists at Fermilab (Chicago) and other schools in Oklahoma to discuss the results of our hands-on analyses of real CMS data.
The morning started with an exercise in which we tried to organize a card deck with many fundamental particles. What organizational principle would you choose? And why? Mass, charge, spin, year of discovery? Darin Acosta (the leader of a similar QuarkNet program at the University of Florida) explained in his presentation how physicists now believe the Standard Model provides a good description of our current understanding of fundamental particles. But, quoting Darin here, "who knows what this will look like 100 years from now?"
Talking about particles is one thing, "seeing" them is a whole other endeavor. In the advanced teaching lab located in Brockman Hall 120, graduate student Jaanita Mehrani demonstrated the workings of a real scintillator-based cosmic ray detector similar to what many schools operate through the QuarkNet CRD program. She also demoed a very small, ultra-portable cosmic ray "watch." She allowed the students to peak at an ongoing physics experiment in which junior undergraduate students measured the lifetime of muons. A Cloud Chamber, located in a dark area of the lab, gave a real sense of muons passing through, as well as other particles, each leaving their signature trails.
More lectures on what it takes to actually measure particles were followed by two more lab tours and a boxed lunch, kindly provided by the Department of Physics & Astronomy.
The two tours took the students and teachers to the labs of Dr. Morosan and Dr. Killian (Dean of Natural Sciences). In Dr. Morosan's lab the students experienced the wondrous world superconducting materials that under very cold conditions will levitate. In Dr. Killian's lab carefully tuned lasers were able to almost stop atoms from vibrating thus creating the literally coolest place in the universe (yes, outer space is on average almost a million times hotter!)
After about an hour of actual physics analyses of real CMS data, all students joined a Zoom meeting with another school in Oklahoma analyzed at the same time ATLAS data and a panel of expert physicists at Fermilab in Chicago.
The agenda, links to resources that we used, and some more pictures can be found at this 2023 MasterClass's page.
The morning started with an exercise in which we tried to organize a card deck with many fundamental particles. What organizational principle would you choose? And why? Mass, charge, spin, year of discovery? Darin Acosta (the leader of a similar QuarkNet program at the University of Florida) explained in his presentation how physicists now believe the Standard Model provides a good description of our current understanding of fundamental particles. But, quoting Darin here, "who knows what this will look like 100 years from now?"
Talking about particles is one thing, "seeing" them is a whole other endeavor. In the advanced teaching lab located in Brockman Hall 120, graduate student Jaanita Mehrani demonstrated the workings of a real scintillator-based cosmic ray detector similar to what many schools operate through the QuarkNet CRD program. She also demoed a very small, ultra-portable cosmic ray "watch." She allowed the students to peak at an ongoing physics experiment in which junior undergraduate students measured the lifetime of muons. A Cloud Chamber, located in a dark area of the lab, gave a real sense of muons passing through, as well as other particles, each leaving their signature trails.
More lectures on what it takes to actually measure particles were followed by two more lab tours and a boxed lunch, kindly provided by the Department of Physics & Astronomy.
The two tours took the students and teachers to the labs of Dr. Morosan and Dr. Killian (Dean of Natural Sciences). In Dr. Morosan's lab the students experienced the wondrous world superconducting materials that under very cold conditions will levitate. In Dr. Killian's lab carefully tuned lasers were able to almost stop atoms from vibrating thus creating the literally coolest place in the universe (yes, outer space is on average almost a million times hotter!)
After about an hour of actual physics analyses of real CMS data, all students joined a Zoom meeting with another school in Oklahoma analyzed at the same time ATLAS data and a panel of expert physicists at Fermilab in Chicago.
The agenda, links to resources that we used, and some more pictures can be found at this 2023 MasterClass's page.