Submitted by: Laura Akesson, Mike Fetsko & Tom Gallo
Collaborators: Justin Cole
School: Mills E. Godwin High School
Summary
In this unit students will have the opportunity to learn about cutting edge, pushing the scientific frontier, high energy physics. Through the use of inquiry investigations that put the student directly in the role of experimenter and the use of authentic data the students will experience what it means to actually be a particle physicist. Students will perform their own research and develop their own research studies utilizing recently released particle data from the largest experiment ever created, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. They will be analyzing histograms and event displays trying to determine the particles and rules that create the structure of all known matter in the universe. In the process of their work, they just might discover never before known physics…the data they are analyzing is real data! They are actually doing the work that the physicists are doing right now all over the world. Since, particle physics research is on a global scale students will have the opportunity to share their teams findings with the world, either through posting their research to a website used by students, teachers, and physicists focused on sharing research findings or through two videoconferences that the students will have the opportunity to share their findings with students all across America or the world.
TIPC Ratings
CMS e-lab: Students will progress through a flowchart of particle physics instruction and detector design. During this section the students, working in collaborative teams, will answer a series of questions in a logbook. The purpose of these questions is to allow the students an opportunity to develop an understanding of particle physics through their own research investigations. The answers to these questions will be found on the internet via hyperlinks within the website. Students will also be directed to locate alternate resources, such as online search engines, databases, and related to help formulate their responses to the questions. The logbook acts as their lab journal; the students are able to enter their thoughts, data, and answers to the prompts in this electronic journal, just like actual scientists. The teacher is then able to access the logbook and provide feedback to the students.
After the preliminary research is done, students will now be given the task of creating their own research study utilizing the analysis tools and real data from the CMS detector at CERN. They will be asked to perform a detector calibration study and to continue entering all of their data and research in support of their study in their logbook. The teacher will access and comment on the logbook entries daily in order to provide feedback and to allow for an open line of communication. The detector calibration study is an important first step for particle physicists to perform in order to ensure that all parts of the detector are functioning correctly. During this time, the students will need to interpret and analyze various histograms that the software creates from the data that the students have selected. The histograms can be edited and adjusted to allow the students to analyze the displays in greater detail. Through their detailed analysis of the histograms, the students will come to a conclusion about the calibration of the detector or some other aspect of detector physics that they were able to interpret from their data and research. The students will be performing the same crucial step that the CMS physicists did with the exact same data. It is possible, although unlikely, that a team of students could actually find “new” physics in their research, since it is, after all, authentic data from an ongoing experiment.
CMS e-lab: At the culmination of their research study the students will be directed to create a presentation of their research on Z-boson or J/Psi decay events. Students are given the task of presenting their findings to the international community. They must determine how they will compile their data. What tool will allow them to effectively communicate globally and allow for feedback? In what format should their presentation be? The students should select a presentation tool that will allow them to reach a global audience and share (via the online particle physics internet community under the umbrella of FermiLab) with other students, teachers, and professor participants in the CMS eLab. Students will be asked to comment and provide feedback on the posters using the “view or add comments” collaboration feature within the site.
Conservation Laws: By way of essential scientific process, students will determine a few additional conservation laws that govern particle interactions and decays in the same method used by particle physicists. After completing this activity at home and writing their own list of conservation laws, students will share their results in small groups. The students must communicate, comparing and contrasting their thought processes from the previous night, and come to a consensus on the conservation laws. Finally, by way of teacher-facilitated classroom discussion, each group presents their own list of conservation laws and the entire class decides on a final list of rules for particle interactions and decays.
Bubble Chamber Detectives: After the Introduction powerpoint, students can use their knowledge of classical physics (from first semester), their knowledge of basic chemistry and periodic classification (from a previous class) and a simple tutorial to access and analyze historic bubble-chamber pictures. By exploring the particle physics world through the use of a historically vital and authentic particle physics tool, students learn the basics of elementary pattern recognition and gain perspective on the big picture of seeing scientific discovery as an analysis of what is interesting as opposed to what is common. It’s important to note two essential characteristics of this activity: 1. The images that the students will be working with are archived photos from one of CERN’s earliest particle physics experiment; they are using real data to formulate their own knowledge in the same way particle physicists did just 40 years ago. 2. Students form their own teams and collaborate with minimal instruction to achieve a brand new understanding of particle interactions.
Masterclass: Students will work in teams of two to four to analyze data collected recently by the large particle collider experiments at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research. They will examine the collisions of elementary particles traveling at close to the speed of light, racing through a 27-kilometer-circumference accelerator. They will use authentic computer program created by particle physicists for actual particle physics research to analyze data from particle collisions, and attempt to find the appropriate (known) branching ratios for Z boson decays, a force carrier important for the potential discovery of the Higgs Boson, which is theorized to give all particles mass. By doing so, they are participating in particle physics research using the same tools and methods currently being used world-wide by modern particle physicists. It is important to note that during this culminating activity students learn first-hand how physicists use indirect evidence to explore phenomena. Via after-school videoconference, they will then compare and discuss their results with participants at other schools in other states – just like actual particle physicists do in international collaborations.
Student Artifact
Download Files
- Particle Physics Lesson Plan
- Particle Physics Links
- Pariticle Physics Student Links
