The teacher workshop, June 23 through June 27, brought eight high school teachers to the UC Santa Cruz campus. Particle Physics and Cosmology were discussed in several seminars. We worked with the teachers on analysis and understanding of scientific data with special emphasis on data taken by cosmic ray detectors provided by QuarkNet. The program was devoted to cosmic ray detection and measurement of the muon lifetime. Unfortunately, many of the detectors were not functional. As we did in the spring, we recommended that QuarkNet assigns the custodianship of the systems to the centers instead of individual schools.

A three-day workshop was organized the weekend of May 30-June 1 2008 on the grounds of the Tobin James Cellars in Paso Robles. More than 100 high school students, teachers and parents organized in 20 teams participated in taking data with scientific balloons, analyzing them and presenting their results in professional manner using PowerPoint slides and animations. The experiment to involve UC Santa Cruz undergraduate students was a great success: 15 students volunteered as mentors, contacted the teams ahead of time to help with the planning of the experiments and offered help and criticism during the data taking and analysis.

Institution URL

http://scipp.ucsc.edu/outreach/