Abstract
QuarkNet is an educational program which brings high school teachers and their students into the particle physics research community. The program supports research experiences and professional development workshops and provides inquiry-oriented investigations, some using real experimental data.The CMS experiment at the LHC has released several thousand proton-proton collision events for use in education and outreach. QuarkNet, in collaboration with CMS, has developed a physics masterclass and e-Lab based on this data.A masterclass is a day-long educational workshop where high school students travel to nearby universities and research laboratories. There they learn from LHC physicists about the basics of particle physics and detectors. They then perform a simple measurement using LHC data, and share their results with other students around the world via videoconference.Since 2011 thousands of students from over 25 countries have participated in the CMS masterclass as organized by QuarkNet and the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG).We describe here the masterclass exercise: the physics, the online event display and database preparation behind it, the measurement the students undertake, their results and experiences, and future plans for the exercise.
Highlights
QuarkNet [1] is an program that brings high-school teachers and students into the particle physics research community by supporting research experiences and professional development workshops, providing access to physics data and to analysis tools, by creating opportunities for use of these data, and by building and fostering communities that use data for engaged learning about science
We describe here the masterclass exercise: the physics, the online event display and database preparation behind it, the measurement the students undertake, their results and experiences, and future plans for the exercise
QuarkNet is organized into centers at universities and laboratories comprising one or more physicists acting as mentors to up to ten high-school teachers
Summary
QuarkNet [1] is an program that brings high-school teachers and students into the particle physics research community by supporting research experiences and professional development workshops, providing access to physics data and to analysis tools, by creating opportunities for use of these data, and by building and fostering communities that use data for engaged learning about science. QuarkNet is organized into centers at universities and laboratories comprising one or more physicists acting as mentors to up to ten high-school teachers. Since 2010, CMS has collected around 28 fb−1 of proton-proton collision data at center-of-mass energies up to 8 TeV as well as data from proton-lead and lead-lead collisions Analysis of these data have produced over 300 published papers describing searches for SUSY and exotica, measurements of QCD, electroweak, top, forward, heavy-ion, and B physics, as well as discovery of the Higgs boson [3]. An LHC masterclass is an activity where high-school students travel to nearby universities and research laboratories, listen to lectures about particle physics and the experiments built with which to study it, analyze real LHC data, and interact with other groups of students participating in the activity in other locations via videoconference. This contribution describes the QuarkNet CMS masterclass exercise, its results and plans for the future
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