QuarkNet - Associate Teacher Institute at Rutgers University
Summer 2002

        This summer I attended a 3 week summer institute called "QuarkNet" held at the Rutgers University Serin Physics/Astronomy facility. In retrospect I can say that this was a program designed to move high school teachers from the classical era into the 20^th or should I say 21^st century. Entering this program I had very high expectations about filling in what I perceive as a void in my knowledge base regarding fundamental, modern physics. Overall, I would say that the program, particularly the lectures and the visitation to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, has met and even exceeded my expectations. I found the opportunity to learn from and discuss modern physics with the many professors and grad students extraordinary. In particular, I found my interactions with Dr. Steve Schnetzer to be thoroughly enlightening. It is clear that he has an incredible handle on the topic of modern particle physics, but more importantly he has the ability to communicate that information lucidly!

Joseph Spaccavento

Joanne Egli   

Dr. Steve Schnetzer

The program began on Monday, July 15, under the guidance of Joseph Spaccavento [Physics teacher/science supervisor at North Arlington High School] and Joanne Egli [Physics teacher at Freehold Boro High School] both of whom participated in their own QuartNet workshop the preceding sum at Snowmass, Colorado. The program consisted of two distinct parts; a lecture/seminar component, usually held each morning, as well as a hands on component where we learned how to interpret, apply and synthesize the information garnered in the lectures into practical knowledge that we could bring back to our classrooms.

QuarkNet

Introductions

High Energy  Expert


Dr. Tom
Devlin

Monday, July 15, 2002
The program began with the usual introductions and discussion of the goals each of us had for the workshop. This was then followed by a lecture by Dr. Tom Devlin on the "Introduction to High Energy Particles and High Energy Physics at Rutgers University. This lecture was a very basic introduction to the nature of particle physics and to the "Standard Model" which is an explanation of the nature of our universe on the scale between about 10^-10 meters and 10^-30 meters, in particular the nature of quarks, leptons and bosons [more about all of these later]. In the afternoon our time was spent primarily on two activities: the "Particle Adventure" and momentum conservation in particle interactions.

Tuesday, July 16, 2002
On the second of the program we attended two lectures. The first was by a most enthusiastic Dr. Yitzhak Sharon of Rutgers University on the nature of nuclear physics. Ordinarily one might consider this to be a small scale topic. But in the overall context of this summer workshop the scale of the atom and the nucleus is actually quite large since the focus of the overall program is on the parts from which atoms and their parts are made [quarks, leptons and bosons]. Dr. Sharon’s enthusiasm and love of physics was shown through his every word. It is easy understand why he is a popular lecturer among his students.
The second lecture of this day was again by our mentor Dr. Steve Schnetzer. In this lecture Dr. Schnetzer continued to develop the standard model including Feynman diagramming. After lunch we completed the "Particle Adventure" online web activity. Of all the activities done this summer this activity is probably the best organized and will help any student to better understand the Standard Model. The balance of the day was spent in group analyzing what we have done to date.

Nuclear Physicist


Dr. Yitzhak
Sharon

Tim Koeth 

Dave Maiullo

 Wednesday, July 17, 2002
We began this session with a discussion of how to incorporate what we have learned in the high school curriculum. This was followed by an activity where momentum and energy conservation were used to determine the mass of the TOP quark. This activity could easily be incorporated into the physics class while developing the conservation of momentum. I recommend it highly. My only wish was that there were more data available providing more variation.
Dr. Steve Schnetzer continued the development of the Standard Model with particular emphasis on QED, QCD and the Weak force. Again there was considerable time spent on the development of Feynman diagrams – excellent development!
In the afternoon Tim Koeth [Rutgers post-graduate student] did a presentation on solid state, diamond based vertex detectors and the work being done on them at Rutgers University.

 In the afternoon a wonderful presentation was done by Dave Maiullo [Rutgers University demonstration expert] on the different demonstrations that can be done with regards to modern, particle physics. Included were demonstrations on bright spectrum emission, generation of liquid oxygen, cosmic rays in a cloud chamber, standing waves in a driven oscillator and many others. Overall, many good ideas were presented at this lecture/demonstration.

Bright Line Spectrum 

 
At the Controls

Tim's Little Magnet!

The Cyclotron

Thursday, July 18, 2002
Dr. Steve Schnetzer completed his introduction to the Standard Model. The focus today was on the interrelationship among QCD, QED and the Weak force leading ultimately the concept of mass and the Higgs field. A couple of interesting side notes: the weak in the Weak force refers to the probability of an interaction rather than to the magnitude of the force! & that there are right handed and left handed fermions and only left handed fermions feel the weak force! As in all cutting edge theories it is perhaps the unanswered questions that are most intriguing: Why is there mass? Why are there exactly 3 families of particles? What are there exactly 3 forces? Why are there only 3 dimensions? Where does gravity fit in? Where is the missing anti-matter?
This was followed by a presentation on cyclotrons by Tim Koeth. This was particularly interesting since Tim has built his own cyclotron here at Rutgers. As a part of the presentation we got to see the cyclotron in action.
In the afternoon we worked on an activity "Finding the Mass of the Top Quark" through the use on 2 dimensional momentum conservation, an activity easily integrated into the high school curriculum. 

 Friday, July 19, 2002
Today’s presentation by Dr. Steven Worm, was on "Particle Detector Techniques". In this presentation the different types of detectors were discussed including: vertex detectors, drift chambers, Cerenkov detectors, electromagnetic calorimeters, hadron calorimeters and muon detectors. Included in this discussion were the different characteristics of these detectors and how each detector performs its function.

Particle Detector 
Expert

Dr. Steven Worm 

Positron-Electron Expert 
Dr. Mohan Kalelkar

Monday, July 22, 2002
This morning was begun doing research on the group presentations to be presented next Monday. There were three topics distributed among the institute participants: the Standard Model, particle accelerators and particle detectors.
Today’s presentation by Dr. Mohan Kalelkar was on "Studying Electron-Positron Annihilations" with particular emphasis on the resulting formation and study of Quarks at Fermilab. The presentation covered the operation of the 90 GeV Fermilab linear accelerator, as well as explaining how the Electron-Positron collisions yield information about Quarks. This was an excellent presentation which clarified many details about the differences between circular acceleration devices [cyclotrons] and linear acceleration machines. At the end of the formal presentation Dr. Kalelkar discussed at length the physics program at Rutgers University.
The afternoon was spent learning how to analyze bubble chamber photos and how to determine what kind of particle is represented by the particular tracks found on the bubble chamber photos. This was followed by studying the different kinds of decay that high energy particles are likely to undergo based upon the various conservation laws. [strangeness, charge, charm, baryon number, lepton number, color charge etc.] Much was learned through this activity, but perhaps more importantly, the seeds of new ideas were planted for tomorrow’s discussion!

 Tuesday, July 23, 2002
This day was begun with a short review of nuclear energy by Dr, Yitzhak Sharon. This was followed by a second brief presentation by Joseph Spaccavento on Neutron scattering experiments he had done during the previous year’s QuarkNet program in Snowmass, Colorado. The idea of the scattering experiments was to determine how to use neutrons to image living tissue through their differing interactions with different scattering media.
The second presentation of this morning was by Dr. Steven Schnetzer on the continuing story of the Standard Model. The pacing of Dr. Schnetzer’s presentations on the Standard Model was just about perfect as his lectures slowly rolled out the details of the model as the institute progressed. Today’s discussion helped to clarify the quark basis of many of the various decay processes. ["Flavor" change, for example] Considerable time was spent on the application of Feynman diagrams to the decay processes. These diagrams were applied to neutrino detectors and "neutrino oscillations".
The afternoon was spent working first with "On Screen Particle Physics". After completing the online activities we discussed the appropriateness of this software for use in the high school classroom. The balance of the day was then spent working within our groups in preparation for the presentations next Monday. 

Standard Model
Elementary Particles Chart

Rutgers Large
Telescope
Dr. Ted Williams 

Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Today was begun with research into the topics for presentation as well as discussion of a number of articles about the introduction of particle physics into the high school curriculum. This was followed by a presentation by Dr. Ted Williams on the South African Large Telescope [SALT] of which Rutgers University is a 10% partner. Discussion was made regarding the special characteristics of the telescope and the opportunities this partnership will bring to future Rutgers students.
After lunch there was a presentation by Kenneth Cecire on cosmic ray detectors and on the detection of particles at energies only dreamed of by current day particle accelerator scientists. The only problem, is to find those very rare, high energy occurrences in their detectors!

Thursday, July 25, 2002
This morning began with research in preparation for the presentations on Monday and was then followed by a lecture by Dr. Amitabh Lath on the CDF detector being developed for the Cern accelerator when it begins operating at the 14 GeV power range with the collisions of protons with protons in the year 2007. Dr. Lath’s discussed in detail the difficulty in "separating the wheat from the chaff" problem involved in proton-proton [or proton-antiproton] collisions. Unlike electron-positron collision which are remarkable clean, the collisions the between protons yields MANY resulting particles due to the increased complexity of colliding particles with substantial internal structure vs. the simpler results when colliding fundamental particles [electrons & positrons as is done a Fermilab] which are believed to have no internal structure. A considerable part of the lecture was spent discussing the importance and structure of the triggering system necessary to successfully separating the relatively few interesting data runs from the almost overwhelming background noise.

Detector 
Specialist

Dr. Amitabh Lath 

Superconducting
Magnet Expert


Brett Parker 

Friday, July 26, 2002
Today was one of the most valuable days of the entire QuarkNet Institute, we visited one of the premier nuclear accelerators in the world at Brookhaven National Laboratories on Long Island. It is one thing to discuss particle physics and particle accelerators in the classroom, it is quite another to see the hardware needed to generate the kinds of data necessary to fully develop our perception of the subatomic particle world.
The day began with the long drive to Brookhaven at 7:00 AM. The traffic was surprisingly light and we made it to Brookhaven by 9:30 AM. Our first activity was a brief introduction the Brookhaven Laboratories via a typical PR video.
Our first presentation was by one of the experts at Brookhaven, Brett Parker, whose field is superconducting magnets. He began by giving us a brief introduction to the work being done at Brookhaven with superconducting magnets followed by a tour of the magnet making facility. The facility was quite extensive and we were shown the work being done in developing new and unique superconducting magnets for many diverse projects around the world. 

This was followed by a visit to the National Synchrotron Light Source where Peter Siddons gave us a thorough guided tour of the two synchrotron radiation sources. It was quite clear these facilities are an invaluable national resource judging by the number and variety of private companies making use of the highly luminous x-ray source available at this facility.

 Synchrotron Expert

Peter Siddons

Joint Quarknet 
Luncheon

We then went to Berkner Hall where we had lunch with a second QuarkNet group from Stonybrook and Brookhaven Laboratories.

 After lunch we then made a visit to the Tandem VandeGraff where we toured the facility under the guidance of Chuck Carlson. It was quite interesting to see two relatively ancient machines serving such an important function as the starting point in the acceleration of heavy [primarily Gold] ions for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider [Rhic]. Mr. Carson did an excellent job of explaining the operation of these two VandeGraffs and how they provided the first step in the acceleration of the heavy ions. 

 VandeGraff Expert

Chuck Carlson

 Relativistic Heavy
Ion Collider

 Finally, we got to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider where we toured the device under the guidance of Mei Bei. In this part of the tour we entered the large [2.6 mile circumference] underground tunnel through which Rhic accelerates Gold ions to very near light speed with the goal of coming as close as possible to the conditions of the "Big Bang". It was pointed out that this machine has the unique capability of studying fundamental particles en masse rather than the typical study which focuses on small numbers of individual particles. 

Lastly, we got to see the enormous detector required to extract the most important product of Rhic, the data! The detector is made up of concentric cylindrical detectors designed to measure the many different and exotic particles generated by the collision of Gold ions moving in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. We left for Rutgers at 4:30 PM and arrived back on campus at 7:30 PM. This was definitely a day well spent!

QuarkNet Participants 

Breakfast with the Rutgers Staff

 Diamond Detector Expert
Dr. Robert Stone

Monday, July 29, 2002
Today we entered the final week of this summer’s QuarkNet Institute with a breakfast provided by the New Jersey Section of the AAPT. During this breakfast we were again given the opportunity to discuss physics with the many particle physicists with whom we have interacted over the last two weeks.
Following the breakfast a presentation was made by Dr. Bob Stone on the CMS tracker being designed by the Rutgers University Particle Group for the new proton-proton collider being developed at Cern in Switzerland. The focus on this discussion was on the development at Rutgers of the innovative use of diamond in the semiconductor vertex detector. Silicon is the material currently used in virtually all vertex detectors. The problem is that silicon is very sensitive to the extremely high radiation levels present so close to the colliding beams. [The vertex detector is the innermost detector and therefore receives the highest ionizing radiation dose!] The Rutgers Particle Physics team is developing diamond as an alternative material with dramatically higher resistance to ionizing radiation.
After lunch each of the three groups of QuarkNet participants made their final presentations on: the Standard Model, particle accelerators and particle detectors.
The final activity of the day was to begin work on the "Catching Some Z’s" activity where large data sets were used to help gain an understanding about how important information can be extracted from the immense volumes of data typically generated in collider experiments. Although this task was extremely difficult, it is my opinion that for it was quite valuable in that it helped me to better appreciate the efforts required to extract significant results.

Tuesday, July 30, 2002
We began the morning by continuing the "Catching Some Z’s" activity begun yesterday afternoon. As this was completed a brief presentation was made by Edward Barts on the semiconductor trigger chips being developed at Rutgers. These chips are being developed to improve the triggering efficiency of the vertex detector so that more data can be successfully collected in less time. Later we had the opportunity to see the fabrication and design facility available at Rutgers.
The next presentation was by Dr. Joel Shappiro on "Superstring" theory and how it fits in with the Standard Model. The need for Superstring theory was developed primarily from the notion of symmetry and how certain parts of the currently recognized theories seem to be missing some key elements.
The afternoon was spent on completing the "Catching Some Z’s" activity. As I said earlier, this was the most difficult take we were faced with during the QuarkNet Institute. 

SuperString Expert


Dr. Joel Shappiro 

Cosmic Ray Expert


Dr. Gordon Thomson 

Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Today we began by discussing as a group the significance of the work done over the last few days on "Catching Some Z’s". Most of us agreed that this activity, as currently designed, is a bit too much for the typical high school class but with appropriate modification might still be adapted for such use.
This morning’s presentation was by Dr. Gordon Thomson on the detection and use of cosmic rays in the study of high energy particle physics. Dr. Thomson reviewed the work he has been doing on cosmic ray detection and discussed the distribution of cosmic ray energies based upon their believed origins. The dissipation of energy for high energy cosmic rays through the "flipping" of quark spin was explained, leading to the inevitable conclusion that virtually all ultra high energy cosmic rays must be local in origin. 
        [P⁺ Þ D+ Þ P⁺ + p]
The afternoon was spent viewing a quite enlightening movie [clearly made for TV – the commercial spots being obvious] on the history of the development of the atomic bomb, Day One. This movie presented many of the moral issues faced by those involved with the development of the atomic bomb, but was not judgmental, leaving the decision making process up to the viewer. This movie has excellent potential for classroom use because it will most assuredly lead students to consider the consequences scientist might face when their research is used for destructive purposes. 

Thursday, August 1, 2002
This final day began with group discussion on the movie Day One viewed yesterday, on the incorporation of what we have learned into our respective curriculums and on the future development activities we might run for the many other physics teachers throughout the state of New Jersey. Many of us are planning to attend the New Jersey Science Teacher’s Convention in October and there help man the QuarkNet table as well as planning a professional development meeting through the NJAAPT sometime this fall/winter.
Our final lecture was by our Rutgers mentor Dr. Steve Schnetzer on "Beyond the Standard Model". It has been clear for some days that Steve very much wanted to get to this point where each of us has sufficient knowledge and understanding that he could take us to where no one has yet been. Dr. Schentzer began by reviewing the Standard Model:

• Three particle types - Quarks, leptons & bosons

• Three Forces – QED, QCD & Weak

• Three particle generations – up/down, charmed/strange, top/bottom [or truth/beauty] as well as electron/electron neutrino, muon/muon neutrino, tauon/tauon neutrino

• Gluons and the "color charge"

• Virtual particles and the "electroweak" force

• The problem of mass, the Higgs field and the accompanying Higgs particle

But here is today’s issue. What happens at distances substantially smaller than those being currently probed? Current experiments are capable of probing down to about 10^-18 meters but what happens down at the Planck dimensions of ~10^-35 m? This is where "beyond the Standard Model" comes into play.
Dr. Schnetzer first reviewed the conditions that define the Planck dimensions of time [~10^-44 seconds], distance [~10^-35 m] and the energy required to reach these parameters [~10¹⁹ GeV]. This then led into the discussion of "Supersymmetry" and its requirement there exist corresponding high mass "partners" for each of the particles familiar in the Standard Model.
Next, the discussion developed into the means of detecting the Higgs particle and the critical nature that this discovery would have to the confirmation of the Standard Model as currently understood.
Finally, the presentation discussed one of the really serious problems in the Standard Model, its inability to account for the gravitational force!

Final Comments

And that was that! I don’t think that I have ever tried to fill my brain with so much information in so little time. It will be months or even years before I will be fully comfortable with all that I have been exposed to this summer at the Rutgers sponsored QuarkNet Institute. Overall, I consider the institute to have been an overwhelming success for me. I must thank both Joseph Spaccavento and Joanne Egli for making this institute possible! I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. In addition, I cannot express enough praise for the many Rutgers speakers who have so thoroughly inspired my thoughts on this much neglected topic. Every speaker did an excellent job.

In particular, however, I would like to thank and praise Dr. Steven Schnetzer for his constant involvement in this institute. He was able to thoroughly communicate the subject matter regarding the Standard Model at an academic level that was very nearly ideal. His patience with my many questions [and I seem to keep coming up with more questions all the time!] was impressive by any standard. Any Rutgers student who has Dr. Schnetzer as an instructor is truly privileged.

Sincerely, Jim Kovalcin     jimthx@comcast.net 

Institute Participants

John Luvera

 
Ken Sadowski

Joe Spaccavento

Joanne Egli

Jim Kovalcin

Rich Slesinski

Emma Balleras

Craig Hinds

Richard Rodin