2019 Annual Report - Minnesota QuarkNet Center

University of Minnesota QuarkNet Center Annual Report 

The Minnesota QuarkNet Center hosted two events during 2019: A MINERvA Neutrino Masterclass in the spring, and a summer teacher meeting. In addition, two Minnesota teachers attended the week-long Data Camp at Fermilab in July: Joe Bollinger as a participant, and Jodi Hansen as a facilitator. As a QuarkNet Teaching and Learning Fellow, Jodi works with the other T&L Fellows to plan and facilitate the Data Camp experience each year. 

The MINERvA Masterclass held at the University of Minnesota on April 6 was attended by 24 students and six teachers from six Minneapolis area high schools. During the masterclass day, students were able to tour both the Mu2e lab and a nanotechnology lab clean room at the university, in addition to the masterclass analysis and videoconference participation. A detailed agenda of the masterclass day can be found at: https://quarknet.org/content/u-m-neutrino-masterclass-april-6-2019. (Scroll down to see pictures from the April 6th masterclass.)

In the summer of 2019, eight teachers met at the University of Minnesota on June 12-14. Day one focused on neutrinos, and included a neutrino talk from mentor Greg Pawloski in addition to several neutrino-based activities. On the afternoon of day one, teachers shared favorite classroom ideas and activities with each other during the popular teacher share-a-thon. Day two focused on CMS; teachers did an early test of the revised CMS masterclass, then connected by videoconference with the Purdue Northwest teachers who were working at Fermilab with Ken Cecire on the same revised CMS masterclass. Josh Hiltbrand provided a CMS talk and teachers also worked through the CMS World Wide Data Day (W2D2) analysis.  On the third day, teachers had the opportunity to do a study with either the CMS or Cosmic e-Lab, then produce and present posters based on their studies. Matt Fritts also gave a talk on dark matter for the teachers. A detailed agenda of this 3-day meeting can be found at: https://quarknet.org/content/2019-minnesota-workshop-neutrinos-cms-update-e-labs. 

Mentor: Greg Pawloski

Lead Teacher: Jon Anderson

Lead Teacher & QuarkNet Staff: Shane Wood