2024 Annual Report

Overview: 

Our group met approximately monthly on video conference (Zoom).  We held Sunday evening meetings as summarized below.  Our biannual in person meeting was held in Albuquerque, where we discussed quantum mechanics, small detectors (cosmic watches as the Accel Kitchen COGAMO), and lighting studies (Langmuir lab).   

Detailed Summary, including meeting attendance records

Date, Topic (Attendees)

• 7/30-8/2 Summer meeting (13)
• 05/19/24 Albuquerque Summer Meeting (13)
• 04/14/24 Eclipse + Summer Meeting (13)
• 03/04/24 High Energy Expt. + Summer meeting
• 01/28/24 2024! (13)
• 12/03/23 Eclipse April 8 2024 (11)
• 10/22/23 Eclipse Oct 14 2023 + WWDD (12)
• 09/10/23 Implementing QN activities in your classroom (9)

Leadership changes: 

• Marc Osherson will replace Antonio as mentor.  
• Megan Alvord will be onboarding as lead teacher

2024 Summer Meeting

Photo album

Attendees

Mentors / Staff (5)

Ken Cecire, Danielle McDermott, Antonio Delgado, Marc Osherson, Dan Karmgard

Teachers / Fellows (8)

Mike Wadness (LHC Fellow), Jim Small, Charlie Payne, Megan Alvord (Coding Fellow), Chris Lacy, Josh Underwood, Nicole Preiser (Cosmic Ray Fellow), Gregory Alley

Guest Speakers/Tours

Tanaka sensei and Aoi san, https://accel-kitchen.com/

Japanese equivalent of QuarkNet

Putting detectors in the hands of Japanese high school students, baking opportunities to do research and collaborate internationally.  We see a small gamma ray detector Aoi is using to measure flux during lightning storms.Tanaka gives an overview of the program goals and detectors.  

Languir Laboratory

http://langmuir.nmt.edu/

Guided tour with David Bennecke (post bacc / trigger man) and Carrie (high school teacher/chaos manager) and students of the summer research camp.  We see the main laboratory - observing stations / instruments, the balloon barn where students are flying a kite for research purposes, and go up the the kiva on South Baldy.  David shows us around the small research lab in the kiva, particularly the spot he stands to trigger the rocker launches during the lighting storm, with the goal of creating the most direct path to ground for the lighting along the copper wire tethers.  We met several students to learn about their projects, from photographing lightning to wildlife cameras.



Side trip to VLA.  

Quick walk around to see this amazing site.  

Main topic: Quantum Mechanics, 

as facilitated by Mike Wadness

Teachers work through hands on activities including the particle / wave nature of light (i.e. double slit activity and photo electric effect), Heisenberg uncertainty principle, polarizers, entanglement