Virginia TEch QuarkNET Center - Report 2021

2021 was a bit of a revival for our Center at Virginia Tech!  After missing our workshop in summer 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, we were thankfully able to meet again (though virtually) in early August just before the school year started for the local school systems. 

The workshop in Summer 2021 focused more than previously on lesson planning/lesson creation - giving teacher participants extra time to completely plan and design Google Classroom compatible versions of Data Portfolio activities.

We hoped that this will assist the teachers to include particle physics in the curriculum again, even with the ongoing struggle of hybrid/virtual instruction this school year. 

Additionally, a day of the workshop was spent on introducing the APS’s StepUp curriculum, giving teachers access to lessons and resources to better incorporate diversity, inclusion, and representation in their classrooms this year.

Three guest speakers, all VT Physics faculty, communicated with our group over Zoom to enhance our workshop experience.

• Prof. Tommy O’Donnell gave an engaging talk about his work on the CUORE experiment, and the search for neutrinoless double beta decay. 
• Prof. Marie Boer gave an eye-opening talk on the complexities of hadronic physics. 
• Prof. Shunsaku Horiuchi (while on sabbatical in Japan) gave a presentation about ultra high energy cosmic rays. Prof. Horiuchi’s talk also introduced the teachers to the CRAYFIS (Cosmic Rays Found In Smartphones) collaboration, which has developed an app that uses phone cameras to detect these ultra high energy cosmic rays.  There is potential for students to be able to download this app and take part in citizen-science. It could also be used to supplement activities based around the QuarkNet CRMD. 

We are extremely grateful to all these speakers for contributing their time and expertise!

Overall, despite the blip in summer 2020, the Virginia Tech Center is still active and healthy. One member teacher left the program, but we also saw the addition of a new member teacher to our ranks. We are happy to welcome her to the QuarkNet experience. It is hoped that next year we will see a return to an in-person workshop, where we look forward to reports from the teachers of their implementation of the lessons developed this year.