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A few ways to bring particles into your classes and to your students

A few ways to bring particles into your classes and to your students. With thanks to Ken Cecire from QuarkNet . QuarkNet.fnal.gov has been around since some time. About this breakout session. Why : you are the best ambassadors of particle physics, as you knead the dough of the future.

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A few ways to bring particles into your classes and to your students

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  1. A few ways to bring particles into your classes and to your students With thanks to Ken Cecire from QuarkNet. a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  2. QuarkNet.fnal.gov has been around since some time a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  3. About this breakout session • Why: you are the best ambassadors of particle physics, as you knead the dough of the future. • What: introduce you to particle physics resources and activities that you can do with your students. • How: go through two QuarkNet activities. • Introduction – 10’ • “Quark puzzle” activity – 40’ • “Plotting LHC discovery” activity – 40’ • Perchance chat with Ken. a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  4. Resources • The International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG): http://ippog.web.cern.ch/ • QuarkNet: http://quarknet.fnal.gov/ a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  5. What we will look at today • Quark Puzzle • students fit quark "pieces" together • use to learn about quark combination rules to form mesons and baryons with electrical charge, color charge, matter-antimater • puzzle "workbench" and pieces (must be cut out) at http://leptoquark.hep.nd.edu/~kcecire/mclib/files2012/QW_puzzle.pdf • instructions at http://leptoquark.hep.nd.edu/~kcecire/mclib/files2012/Quark_Instructions.pdf • Plotting LHC Discovery • students construct J/Psi mass plot from data, identify peak and background • students then examine a discovery plot from LHC (e.g. 4 July 2012) and pick out similar features • description for students at http://quarknet.us/library/upload/7/73/Discoveryplots_student.pdf • description for facilitator at http://quarknet.us/library/upload/0/0e/Discoveryplots_tchr.pdf a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  6. Quark puzzle • Concepts: • Compositeness of matter at the lowest levels. • Hadrons: mesons vs. baryons. • Symmetries imply rules for composition. • Charges come in many flavours. a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  7. Pieces to put together a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  8. Hands-on part Quark puzzle a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  9. a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  10. a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  11. Plotting LHC discovery • Concepts: • Peaks imply correlations. • Quantities that are invariant. • Discoveries are declared at some level of significance. a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  12. This is not pretend science • On November 10, 1974, SLAC's Burton Richter and colleagues found evidence for a particle they called the Ψ (the Greek letter Psi). Meanwhile on the east coast of the United States, Samuel Ting and his colleagues found comparable evidence for a particle they called the J. • Both were the same particle and papers from both groups were published in Physical Review Letters on 2 December, 1974, as the first evidence for what is now known as the J/Ψ. Richter and Ting were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976 for the discovery, a mere two years after the work was done. http://cern.ch/go/S8S7 a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  13. The LHC and New Physics It’s the dawn of an exciting age of new discovery in particle physics! At CERN, the LHC and its experiments are tuning up. CMS – the Compact Muon Solenoid – has been taking data. Our job is to understand how the detector responds to data from a known Standard Model particle in the 7 TeV run from 2010.

  14. The LHC and New Physics The LHC is buried ~100 m below the surface near the Swiss-French border.

  15. Detectors Generic Design • Cylinders wrapped around the beam pipe • From inner to outer . . . • Tracking • Electromagnetic calorimeter • Hadronic calorimeter • Magnet* • Muon chamber • * location of magnet depends on specific detector design

  16. Detectors Fergus Wilson, RAL

  17. Proton Interactions The beam particles each have a total energy of 3.5 TeV: 2 x 3.5 TeV = 7 TeV* The individual particles that make up the proton only have a fraction of this energy. New particles made in the collision always have a mass smaller than that energy. * This was the energy in the 2010 run. It has since been increased to 8 TeV.

  18. Particle Decays The collisions create new particles that promptly decay. Decaying particles always produce lighter particles. Conservation laws allow us to see patterns in the decays. Can you name some of these conservation laws?

  19. Particle Decays Often, quarks are scattered in collisions. As they separate, the binding energy between them converts to sprays of new particles called jets. Muon signals can come from jets. They are not what we are looking for.

  20. Particle Decays We are studying the J/Y, a particle with no charge that decays into two muons. What do we know about the charges of the muons? What is the charge of the J/Y?

  21. Particle Decays An event with two oppositely charged muons might be a decay of the particle that we are interested in. It might also be something else.

  22. CMS Mass Plot of Z boson

  23. Histogram Review Well-defined peak Outliers: lower frequency Where is the peak? What is the width? Is the “mass” precise?

  24. Histogram Review Where is the peak? What is the width? Where are the outliers? Not all histograms have same precision

  25. Histogram Review Twin peaks: • Poor definition of one signal or • Two signals In particle physics, could be: • Two separate particles or • Large signal as "background" and smaller “bump” showing actual particle under study.

  26. Higgs at LHC a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  27. Another peak: B0s⟶μ+μ- Context for plot at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uslhc/8182573711/ . a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  28. The materials a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  29. Hands-on part Plotting LHC discovery a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  30. More activities • CMS Data Express • a "short form" of the CMS masterclass measurement that can be accomplished in 1-2 hours and is relatively easy to use • https://quarknet.i2u2.org/document/cms-data-express • CMS e-Lab • rather more involved; users can make mass plots and other histograms from relatively large sets of CMS data; login as guest; I can create accounts for those who want to get investigate further for use with students. • http://www.i2u2.org/elab/cms a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

  31. Wrap-up • There are lots of resources out there to inspire your students. • If you want to know more about this, drop us a line. • Ken is available to help you with the materials/activities: kcecire@nd.edu a.david@cern.ch - #CERNPhil2014

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