2014 Annual Report - University of Mississippi

by Lucien Cremaldi

The Mississippi QuarkNet struggled a bit in 2014. We met in the fall for 2013 to make plans for Masterclass, a LIGO trip, and summer workshop. Unfortunately our plans for spring Masterclass were not well founded and we ended up not hosting the event. Dennis Reed retired from the Math and Science School and we are just recovering from the loss. The QuarkNeT teachers schedule to visit the LIGO detector in Livingston LA were delayed, when the LIGO Science Center coincidently needed to shut down to put up a new exhibit and rescheduling became difficult. We have tentatively plan to make the LIGO visit in the fall. We held a small workshop in the summer. Dr. Kroeger gave lectures on electromagnetism. Dr. Cremaldi led experiments on the the photoelectric effect and the angular dependence of cosmic rays. Denis Byrd received CEU credit for the work.

Jimmy Reidy and student Cole Atkins work on projects in June and July. Cole and Jimmy built an 8x8x8 LED cube, Figure 1(a), powered by an arduino micro-controller. The cube was very challenging to build, soldering over 500 LEDs, and making repairs. The idea was to program cosmic ray or particle interaction type events for display purposes. Maybe even muons stopping and decaying. The circuit board which attached to the arduino was challenging. We are learning the programming of the arduino. Cole and Jimmy also worked with David Sanders on a flow controller and flow read-back electronics for the Belle II experiment, Figure 1(b).