QuarkNet, cosmic rays, Davis-Bachall scholars

Last month scientists, teachers and students worked together at the Sanford Lab on a project to detect cosmic radiation.

The convergence of talent was partly by accident. This year?s class of 10 Davis-Bachall scholars were at the Sanford Lab for a week of study, before they left for studies at the NO?A experiment in Minnesota, at the University of Wisconsin, at Fermi National Accelerator Lab (Fermilab) and finally at Princeton University. That same week, five high school science teachers who are members of Black Hills State University?s QuarkNet Center visited the Sanford Lab to work with BHSU physics professor Kara Keeter and Bob Peterson of Fermilab, which sponsors the nationwide QuarkNet program.

Sanford Lab Deputy Education and Outreach Director Peggy Norris, a nuclear physicist herself, joined the diverse group as they worked to ?cross calibrate? sets of cosmic ray muon detectors. ?It wasn?t planned ahead of time, but it worked out well,? Norris said.

The QuarkNet program sets up centers at universities associated with particle physics laboratories.  The BHSU center is unique, Keeter said, because it is the only one associated with an underground laboratory.

Teachers who join QuarkNet make a multi-year commitment to join with other teachers and in activities and workshops throughout the year. During a week-long workshop last month, for example, BHSU QuarkNet teachers attended lectures on physics and learned how to work with Fermilab?s online data analysis software. They also built cosmic ray detectors, which they?ll use in their classrooms next year.

Keeter, who created the BHSU QuarkNet program, works closely with the Sanford Lab. (And her husband, physicist Jaret Heise, is our science liaison director.)

Last March, five BHSU QuarkNet teachers brought about 40 high school students to Sanford Lab with Kara for a master class on how to analyze date from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. The students discussed the results, via videoconference, with scientists at Fermilab and CERN and with other students around the world.

QuarkNet is funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The program provides opportunities for high school and middle school science teachers to work directly with particle physicists, collecting and analyzing real data.

Next year, Keeter hopes to add two more teachers to the six already participating in the BHSU QuarkNet program. For more information on QuarkNet go to quarknet.fnal.gov/ and to quarknetbhsu.wikispaces.com/.