UW–MADISON QUARKNET CENTER 2014-2015 ANNUAL REPORT

The QuarkNet efforts at UW–Madison are led by the Wisconsin IceCube Astrophysics Center (WIPAC). Prof. Justin Vandenbroucke (PI) and Dr Silvia Bravo (co-PI) work together with several researchers working with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the Distributed Electronic Cosmic-ray Observatory (DECO).

The QuarkNet program @ WIPAC included two activities this year.

i) IceCube Masterclass at WIPAC, held on March 18 in Madison. WIPAC led the second edition of the IceCube Masterclasses held at ten different IceCube institutions in the US and Europe. In Madison, 30 students from six high schools in the Madison area attended the masterclass.

Budget considerations: there are no budget expenses associated with this activity.

ii) HS student internship to develop data analysis tools for DECO as weel as the DECO iOS app.  Prof. Justin Vandenbroucke leads the DECO project, an app that turns your cell phone into a cosmic-ray detector. After some months focusing on development, the app is now ready to be used in formal and non-formal learning environments. We recruited four high school students to work with us during the summer of 2015.  Three students developed algorithms to automatically classify DECO events and the fourth one developed the iOS version of the DECO app. All students keep collaborating with us during the academic year 2015-2016.

Budget considerations: students worked during 6 weeks with an hourly pay of $7.75 per hour .

We keep working with our QuarkNet teachers, although we did not host any teacher workshop this year.

2014-2015 Budget