2020 KSU Annual Report

Kansas State University QuarkNet Center, 2019-2020 Annual Report

The K-State group held a three-half-day-long Zoom workshop and a Master Class Orientation in the last fiscal year. In addition, we are also coordinating a research project with QuarkNet Fellow Martin Shaffer that involves most of our CRMD teachers working with their students to correlate muon rates with atmospheric temperature and pressure changes (available from NASA) as weather fronts move through Kansas and Arkansas. Preliminary results were presented in a poster at the 2019 International Conference on Cosmic Rays.

The Master Class Orientation was held on February 29, 2020 and was attended by 11 teachers. A 3 half-day-long Zoom workshop was held on June 22-24, 2020. This was attended by 9 teachers and led by Shane Wood. On other fronts, KSU QuarkNet teachers continued to avail themselves of national QuarkNet and other HEP-related opportunities seeded by QuarkNet. At least one teacher participated in the 2020 on-line Data Camp.

The KSU group remains strong in its seventeenth year of existence. Approximately two and half dozen teachers participate, a core group of a dozen or so regularly, and the rest at the rate of once every other meeting.  We continue to specialize in serving small rural high schools throughout the state of Kansas and have now started to get some inner-city high school teachers from Kansas City, MO, as well as one from Arkansas. Plans for 2020-2021 include a fall 2020 Zoom workshop, an early spring 2021 Master Class orientation workshop and participation in a Master Class in late spring 2021, if covid cooperates.

Bharat Ratra, mentor