2014 Annual Report - Oklahoma
QuarkNet 2014 gave some Oklahoma high school science teachers an inside look at the world of particle physics and some of the amazing research being done at OSU and OU. The program included lectures, hands-on activities, and lab tours. This year we also had the special treat of Ken Cecire visiting to lend a helping hand.
The teachers learned about a range of topics in high energy physics in the lectures on Monday and Tuesday, including:
- an overview of the experimental high energy physics program
- an introduction to the Higgs boson and how it was discovered
- an introduction to Symmersymmetry
- neutrinos and their crazy ways.
Monday and Tuesday also featured tours of some of the experimental physics labs at OSU, including a laser lab, radiation lab, and biophysics lab. The teachers got their hands dirty on Thursday and Friday, looking at data from the ATLAS experiment and trying to identify various praticles produced in the collisions.
On Wednesday teachers traveled to OU where they were give a tour of physics labs and introduced to the research done at OU. IN addition, we had a tour of the history of science museum where we saw original first-edition books from Newton, Galileo, and Darwin.