The Ole Miss Group:

The group at the University of Mississippi is somewhat unique in the fact that most of the high energy group is involved in the project in one form or another. The professors include Dr. James Reidy, Sr. who is overseeing the program, Dr. Rob Kroeger, who is providing additional physics background to the high school teachers involved, Dr. Lucien Cremaldi, who is working with the teachers on taking measurements associated with the Auger Project (more on that below), and Dr. Don Summers, an additional source for help and advice on particle detectors. Another invaluable resource has been Dr. David Sanders, the computer specialist in the department who as also done work in detector assembly.

The high school teachers involved this year include Jim Reidy, Jr., a physics and chemistry teacher at Oxford High School in Oxford, Mississippi, and Ken Wester who teaches several levels of physics at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science in Columbus, Mississippi.

If you're interested, you can see the entire group here!

Our Accomplishments and Goals for 2001-2002

This is the first year for this program at Ole Miss, so we are really just getting off the ground. So far this summer, the high school teachers (henceforth to be refered to as "we") have accomplished the following:

We spent several days at Fermilab, touring the facility and gaining a better understanding of how the lab opperates. We also visited the Leon Lederman Science Center and the Teacher Resource Center at Fermilab. For teachers interested in activities related to particle physics, these are both wonderful resources.

We have been taking measurements on how light is reflected off the surface of Tyvek, a material produced by 3M which is used to line the cosmic ray detectors utilized in the Pierre Auger (pronounced "oh-ZHAY") Project. To find out more about cosmic rays or the Pierre Auger Project, follow this link.

We attended semi-annual meeting of high energy physicists from around the country and around the world, Snowmass2001, held at Snowmass Village, Colorado. Here physicists come together to discuss issues in the field of high energy physics and the direction that research should follow in the coming years. The QuarkNet teachers from around the country were invited to attend a weeklong workshop where we learned how to analyze data generated by the particle detectors and how to incorperate particle physics in a high school classroom environment.

At the QuarkNet meeting in Snowmass, each team was able to build a cosmic ray detector, consisting of two scinillators and a numeric desplay that counts the number of cosmic rays coming in over a given time period. We hope to use this in the classroom this coming year to plot data looking at dependance on time of day, types and amount of shielding, and even the lifetime of a muon (the prime constituant of the cosmic rays reaching the ground). In the near future we hope to construct a portable solid-state cosmic ray detector that has a display showing the actual tracks of these particles as they enter the detector.We are working on getting the parts now and should be able to contstruct the unit within the next month or two.You can also view a QuickTime Movie (3.7 MB) of the output display of this device by visiting http://quarknet.fnal.gov/materials.

Jim Reidy - reidy63@yahoo.com
Ken Wester - westerken@hotmail.com

Last updated:Wednesday, 30-May-2007 13:06:40 CDT