CAREER: Precision Studies of the Top Quark and Muon Telescopes for High School Classrooms

University Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

This CAREER proposal requests support for an expansion of the Education/Outreach pilot program based on QuarkNet with three-week summer workshops for high school science teachers. In addition, there is a request for funds to build and test a prototype high-level trigger and data acquisition system to upgrade the CDF Run IIb data collection capability. A workshop for fourteen Rochester-area high school teachers used funding from the QuarkNet initiative in Summer 2000. Based on this pilot program, this proposal seeks to expand the project by providing three-week workshops for local middle and high school physics and physical science teachers with the goal of educating both teachers as well as their students about modern particle physics research. There would be lectures on particle physics as well as a plan to build cosmic-ray muon telescopes. These telescopes would then be used in the high school classrooms with student involvement. The PI has been heavily involved in the high-level trigger and data acquisition system and the offline data reconstruction effort for the CDF experiment at Fermilab. With the expectation of Run IIb to increase the instantaneous luminosity by a factor of 2.5 and the total data collected by a factor of 10, major upgrades in the data acquisition and reconstruction systems are needed. This proposal requests funds to purchase equipment to prototype and test a low-cost PC-based central analysis farm for CDF.