The Rice/UH Greater Houston QuarkNet Center
QuarkNet Masterclasses for High School Students
The Physics Departments of Rice University and University of Houston have joined forces more than 15 years ago to bring the QuarkNet Program to the Greater Houston high schools.
QuarkNet is a program sponsored by NSF and pairs high school science teachers with active researchers in particle and nuclear physics. It is a very well-established program, with over 50 centers in many parts of the country. In addition to the Summer Workshops for Highschool Teachers, we organize Spring Masterclasses, often in collaboration with the International Masterclass and domestic masterclass programs.
You can find a list of our recent Masterclasses as well as the upcoming one in the sidebar, on the right of this page. Typical attendance runs between 20-30 students. If you are interested in participating then please have your high school teacher reach out to me.
How does a typical Masterclass look like?
As a student, you will gain insight into methods used in analyzing data for particle physics. The day will begin with an introduction to particle physics by Rice or UH professors with a short discussion of their research in nuclear and particle physics at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in NY or at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Students will analyze CMS data from the LHC at CERN and then video conference with physicists from Fermilab to discuss results and ask questions.
How students can prepare:
- A Day with Particles video
- Particle adventure website.
- CMS Experiment video
Resources
QuarkNet program official websiteActivities in QuarkNet Houston Center (blog):
Contacts
Houston Area Program Coordinator:
- Prof. Frank Geurts
Lead Teacher:
- Mary Yarbray (Klein College)
QuarkNet Fellow:
- Shane Wood
Faculty Sponsors:
- Rice Univ.: Prof. Frank Geurts
- UH : Prof. Larry Pinsky
