CMS J/Psi Masterclass 2020

Report by Mike Fetsko:

On February 6th, four teachers held a QuarkNet masterclass event in their schools.  Students from Vancouver (St. Thomas More Collegiate), Barcelona (Lycee Francais de Barcelone), Boston (Medford High School with Mike Wadness), and Richmond (Godwin High School with Mike Fetsko) all participated in the event.  Medford and Godwin are both under the guidance of QuarkNet fellows.  As a part of the ITW_CERN 2019 summer program, Mike Fetsko met the two teachers at Vancouver and Barcelona.  At some time before the videoconference the students at each school were provided instruction related to the Standard Model and the event analysis and then asked to work through the J/Psi Masterclass.  

After the data analysis was completed, the students all connected for a videoconference to share their results and to listen to a presentation.  The results of each school’s analysis were shared via googledoc with QuarkNet staff member Shane Wood.  Shane acted as the moderator for the videoconference and made sure that everything moved smoothly with the student presentations and the Q & A with our special guest.  Each school was given the opportunity to present a portion of their findings and then asked questions posed by the other students and/or Shane.  After the result presentations were completed, the special guest was then invited to give her presentation.  Dr. Summer Blot is a former student of Mike Fetsko’s and is currently a physicist working on the IceCube experiment.  Summer spoke about her experiences as a physicist and how her work was quite similar to the work that the students just completed.  The students were then allowed to ask Summer questions for the remainder of the videoconference.

Images from Godwin High School:

And an image from Medford High School: