The Kansas State University QuarkNet Center is located in Manhattan, Kansas. QuarkNet is a NSF and DOE funded program whose aim is to support science education in schools by establishing a nation-wide science teacher network. This center provides opportunities for science teachers to learn firsthand about frontline physics research, and establish mentor relationships between science teachers and physics professors at universities.
Our QuarkNet center here at Kansas State University features an ongoing collaboration between members of the High Energy Physics (HEP) group at KSU and the Physics Education Research (PER) group. Many of the members routinely engage in outreach projects through ongoing activities such as the REU program, the KSU Physics open house, and visits to K-12 schools in the region. In addition we have set up a series of special events in the past that have established one-on-one contacts between our group and many high school science teachers in Kansas.
Our HEP group is heavily involved in Hadron Collider experiments on two continents; the Tevatron at Fermilab and the LHC, which is located on the border between Switzerland and France. We build, calibrate, and/or operate silicon detectors for these two experiments.
The ultimate goal of these devices is to increase our knowledge of heavy quarks and to search for new particles like the elusive Higgs Boson. KSU has an active research program in the physics of heavy quarks (beauty and top quarks) which rely on the precise measurements of particle decay vertices with silicon microvertex trackers.
Our outreach efforts provide participants with hands-on experience with state-of-the-art research tools as well as measurements of real particles with our cosmic ray test stand.
E-mail: bolton@phys.ksu.edu.
Phone: (785) 532-1644
Fax: (785) 532-6806