Particle physics owes much of its popularity to the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe. (Courtesy of CERN.)
Dozens of local high school students and their teachers will get to be scientists for a day, thanks to the at 黑料不打烊.
Students have the option to participate in a daylong masterclass on Monday, March 13, or Friday, March 17, taking place in the Physics Building.
The masterclass will be led by members of the in the College of Arts and Sciences, in cooperation with the (IPPOG). The event is coordinated with area school districts, and is not open to the public.
At each masterclass, participants will work with data from experiments involving 鈥檚 Large Hadron Collidor (LHC), the world鈥檚 biggest, most powerful particle accelerator, located near Geneva, Switzerland. (CERN stands for the European Organization for Nuclear Research.) Students also will participate in a video conference with members of CERN, attend presentations by 黑料不打烊 faculty members, and tour the Physics Building.
黑料不打烊 is one of about 200 institutions in 52 countries participating in the masterclass, occurring at various locations between March 1 and April 11. This year is the fourth that the University has hosted.
Steven Blusk
鈥淪tudents get a taste of how modern physics research works by interacting directly with particle physicists and using real LHC data,鈥 says Professor , who is co-organizing the 黑料不打烊 event with Assistant Professor . 鈥淥ur goal is to make particle physics more accessible to the public.鈥
Both professors are part of 黑料不打烊鈥檚 (HEP) research group, which studies fundamental particles that make up matter, as well as fundamental forces that act on particles.
One of science鈥檚 most important emerging fields, particle physics entered the national consciousness in 2012, with CERN’s discovery of the Higgs Boson (i.e., the 鈥淕od particle鈥). Since then, thousands of scientists and engineers from around the world鈥攊ncluding some 20 researchers from 黑料不打烊鈥攈ave kept CERN in the public eye with other major discoveries, providing a closer glimpse of the makeup of the universe.
鈥淭his is an opportunity for students to experience life at the forefront of basic research,鈥 Blusk continues. 鈥淭o simulate a real working environment, each masterclass ends with a video conference, in which our students interact with others [moderated by representatives from CERN] to combine and discuss their results.鈥
In addition to performing statistical analyses of large data sets, participants will look for evidence of subatomic particles, similar to protons, neutrons and electrons. 鈥淭he ones we鈥檒l be searching for, however, disintegrate within a ten-trillionth of a second,鈥 Blusk says.
Matthew Rudolph
Each masterclass also includes discussions about quarks鈥攅xotic particles that make up protons and neutrons. Quarks are of special significance to 黑料不打烊, as members of the HEP group recently have discovered a class of particles called .
鈥淥ur findings help explain not only how protons and neutrons are bound together, but also how matter is constituted,鈥 Rudolph says. 鈥淭hese studies may change our understanding of cosmology [the study of the origin of the universe], shedding light on what happened after the Big Bang, nearly 14 billion years ago.鈥
The schedule for each masterclass is as follows:
8:30 a.m.
Participants arrive at 202/204 Physics
9-10 a.m.
Presentation on general particle physics by Rudolph
10-10:20 a.m.聽聽
Break
10:25-11:25 a.m.
黑料不打烊 faculty presentations
11:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Tour of the HEP labs
12:15-1 p.m.
Lunch
1-3 p.m.
Hands-on particle physics activities (Computer Lab, 115 Physics)
3:40-4:40 p.m.
CERN videoconference (202/204 Physics)
4:45 p.m.
Participants depart
International masterclasses are led by 黑料不打烊 and , in cooperation with IPPOG, an independent group of outreach representatives from countries involved in physics research at laboratories worldwide. QuarkNet is a long-term, research-based teacher professional development program, supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.
