Welcome to the SRCH project at the QuarkNet Lead Teacher Institute.
During the week, you will be working in two collaboration teams. Each team will analyze data collected from the hypoeticSolenoid Radial Calorimetric Hodoscope detector (SRCH; it simulates collision data from an electron/positron collider) and present its results in a conference on Friday.
Goals
We hope that you will learn about physics, teamwork, and teaching during the week's activities. Here are a few specific goals we'd like you to keep in mind:Particle Physics
- Strengthen and reinforce your understanding of the relationships among energy, momentum, and mass and of the behavior of charged particles in a magnetic field.
- Understand and check the performance of the major components of the SRCH particle detector.
- Probe the colliding beam data in order to identify and study particles produced in beam collisons.
- Present your findings in the Friday conference.
- Reflect on how this activity either does or does not reflect scientific inquiry, and how it affects you as a student and as a teacher.
- Develop and practice teamwork norms that you can use in your classroom.
- Reflect on how this or a similar activity would need to be modified for use in your classroom.
- Share and discuss your findings in the Saturday pedagogy seminar.
Getting Started
Each of you is a staff scientist working in the SRCH collaboration, either assigned to the Blue Team or the Orange Team. You report to the sometimes-helpful and usually-demanding Level-3 project managers, who have scheduled an all-hands conference this coming Friday to discuss current Orange and Blue results.The first step in the process is to read the SRCH memo, which just arrived today from the Level-3 managers. The memo gives your team its charge for the remainder of the week.