UPRM QuarkNet Center 2022 Annual Report

The University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM) QuarkNet center held three different workshops including different physics topics during 2022.

The first workshop was the Masterclass Orientation for Physics and Chemistry high school teachers from several public and private schools from Puerto Rico, it was on March 5, 2022. It was held online virtually through Zoom. In this workshop we had Neutrino physics presentations and the Minerva detector presentation given by excellent professionals as Ken Cecire, Helen Coyle, Hector Mendez, and Daniel Gutierrez. Each of the participating high school teachers, brought students to the Masterclass later that month.

The second workshop was virtually online the Minerva Neutrino Masterclass on March 26, 2022, from 8:30am to 5:00pm. In this workshop we had several activities and presentation for the high school students and their physics and chemistry teachers. We had a Standard Model, Neutrino, and Minerva presentation in charge of Daniel Gutierrez (Physics Professor) and Danelix Cordero (high school physics teacher). We had a presentation of Physics Studies and Opportunity for physics students at universities in charge of Dr. Samuel Santana (Physics Professor at UPRM). After all that the students analyze the Minerva data to get neutrino information through histograms with the guidance of Ken Cecire and Daniel Gutierrez). At the end we closed the activity with the Video conference to discuss the result with Ken Cecire and Dr. T Junk from Fermilab. The students loved the activity which also included a Kahoot competition at the end.

The third workshop was just for the teachers and was held presential at the UPRM at the Physics department the November 12, 2022. In this workshop we had presentations of the universe and the James Webb Telescope in charge of the Physics professors Hector Mendez and Samuel Santana. We also had Neutrino physics presentations from Daniel Gutierrez, activities from the data activities from Ken Cecire, a NOvA Masterclass orientation from Shane Wood and a Python Coding introduction from Danelix Cordero.

All the activities and workshops accomplished their purposes. The teachers and students showed a great interest and motivation.