QUARKNET AT FSU

at FSU

A program to establish collaboration between physicists active in research and school science teachers

Welcome to the Website of the FSU QuarkNet center!!

QuarkNet is an educational program sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy whose aim is to support science education in schools by establishing a nation-wide science teacher network. It provides opportunities for school science teachers to learn firsthand about frontline physics research in universities, and establish mentor relationships between science teachers and physics professors at universities.

Since 1999, QuarkNet has established several new centers each year in universities and laboratories participating in hadron collider experiments at CERN in Switzerland and at Fermilab and SLAC in the US. There are now fifty-three centers which are associated with research groups at universities and labs across the U.S.

The Physics Department at FSU is one of the twelve sites selected in the first year (1999) of Quarknet. The first two high school science teachers from Leon County who participated in this program starting in summer 1999 were
Lance King of Lincoln High School in Tallahassee (now in charge of lecture demonstrations in FSU's Physics Department) and
Brian McClain of Godby High School in Tallahassee.
The present lead techers are
Adam Lamee of Lincoln High School in Tallahassee,
and Gerry Hart of Godby High School in Tallahassee.

This year we have held several meetings where teachers came together and had an opportunity to share their experiences. Our aim is to encourage teachers to include more "modern" (20th and 21st century) physics in their curriculum, and we want to to make a focused effort to help interested teachers to acquire better understanding of modern physics so that they would feel more comfortable presenting such topics in the classroom. To achieve this goal, we plan to do the following:

during the school year, have regular (about every four to six weeks) meetings with lectures, discussions,
possibly have a few mini-workshops (half-day) in the summer or some other date to be defined.
Activities during meetings:
- do some of the "classical" experiments, e.g.
  - measurement of e/m,
  - Franck-Hertz experiment (inelastic scattering of electrons off Hg atoms)
  - photelectric effect
- do analysis of a bubble chamber experiment (determine the mass and lifetime of K⁰ and Lambda)
- teach teachers particle physics:
  - give introductory lectures
  - show websites with resources
  - go through particle physics tutorials (e.g. Particle adventure, Fermilab (The science of matter, space and time,..)
  - discuss cosmic rays - excursion into astroparticle physics - link to cosmology
  - we could also have "how things work" sessions
mentors are of course also available as a general resource for help with physics questions, advice,...
If there is enough interest, we'll hold another summer workshop, similar to the ones we had in the summers of 2000, 2001 and 2002.