With the CMS e-Lab students can join a scientific collaboration in this series of studies of high-energy collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. We are collaborating with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment to produce a student-led, teacher-guided project. At the present, we have test beam, Monte Carlo (simulated) data and run data. We expect more data through 2010 and 2011. By using the web, students are able to analyze and share these data with fellow students and other researchers. Students write a researchable question and analyze data in much the same way as professional scientists. e-Lab tools facilitate collaboration among students as they develop their investigations and report their results.

Students begin their investigation by watching a Cool Science video to get some insight into the context of their project. They can perform one of several calibration studies or use a variety of data exploration tools to develop their own investigation. They can use the project milestones to gain some necessary background and guide their research, and can record their work and reflect on their progress in their e-Logbook. Students post the results of their studies as online posters. The real scientific collaboration follows. Students can review the results of other studies online, comparing data and analyses. Using online tools, they can correspond with other research groups, post comments and questions and, in general, participate in the part of scientific research that is often left out of classroom experiments.

CMS Project Page - You can schedule a two-day workshop to parctice faciliating student learning using the CMS e-Lab. Contact Tom Loughran at Notre Dame.

Thanks to CMS Outreach at CERN for the use of this animation.