The SMU QuarkNet Page

QuarkNet provides professional development and on-going support for physics teachers who get involved in the program. The professional development occurs primarily during a week long summer workshop on the SMU campus, and this is supplemented with various events during the academic year.

The teachers will help develop inquiry-oriented investigations by which their students will learn kinematics, particles, waves, electricity and magnetism, energy and momentum, radioactive decay, optics, relativity, forces, and the structure of matter.

The goals for teachers include a deeper understanding of physics content, an appreciation for the machinery of modern science, an introduction to inquiry-based teaching as well as evolution in individual teaching to a more student-centered mode of instruction.

The SMU QuarkNet program began in Summer 2000, and this has grown to a large and active network of high school teachers in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

The summer QuarkNet program includes various lectures presented by both SMU faculty and the QuarkNet participants. The workshops also include projects where the participants construct selected demonstration projects for use in their own classrooms.

The workshops are usually in early August.


2013 Workshop


Please contact

Randy Scalise or Simon Dalley if you are interested.


Lectures from the 2012 Workshop

Lectures from the 2011 Workshop

Lectures from the 2010 Workshop

Lectures from the 2009 Workshop

Lectures from the 2008 Workshop

Lectures from the 2007 Workshop

Lectures from the 2006 Workshop

Lectures from the 2004 Workshop (7-11 June 2004)

Monday  9:00-9:10  Welcome and Introduction
        9:10-10:00 Origin and Fate of the Universe / Standard
                   Model - Rich Lines

       10:30-11:30 (Continued) + Audience Feedback

        1-5pm: Lab

Tuesday  9:00-10:00  PC Particle Physics Experiments for High
                     School Students - Darren Carollo

        10:30-11:30 (Continued)

        1-5pm: Lab

Wednesday  9:00-10:00 You Know More Physics Than You
                      Realize - Allen Morris

          10:30-11:30 High Energy Cosmic Rays - Stuart Wick

        1-5pm: Lab

Thursday   9:00-9:30 Electric Potential Experiment - David Koch
           9:30-10:00 Astronomy and Physics Labs on the Cheap
                      - John Cotton/Randy Scalise

          10:30-11:30 (TBD) - Kris Whelan

        1-5pm: Lab

Friday    9:00-10:00 Elegant Universe video

         10:30-11:20 Explanantion of video - Fred Olness
         11:20-11:30 Wrap-up

        12:00-1:30  Final lunch: Peggy Sue's BBQ

        2-4pm: Lab

For information, please contact Randy Scalise


SMU QuarkNet High School Science Teachers Workshop


Click on picture for high quality version

Individual Pics of the 2003 Workshop Particiants




SMU Faculty Participants:

Professor Ryszard Stroynowski

Professor Fred Olness

Professor Tom Coan

Professor Randall J. Scalise

Professor Jingbo Ye

Professor Simon Dalley

Randy Scalise has a drink of liquid nitrogen. (Don't try this at home!!!)


Lectures from the Workshop 2003:  9-13 June 2003 



The SMUon Project:

Resources provided by Jingbo Ye:

Movies and other useful resources: (Careful, some of these are big)

The Particle Adventure: The whole thing in a single zip file:  (86M Zip File)
The ATLAS Movie: (185M Zip File)
The RHIC Movie: (123M Zip File)


Lectures we borrowed from other sources:

Lectures by Luciano Maiani at CERN Summer School 2001  (2.4M PDF)
Lectures by Deborah Harris for Tevatron University 2002  (1.6M PDF)
CROP Project: Lectures by Gregory Snow   (4.6M PDF)
Fermi: Interactions: Overview of High Energy Physics  (6.8M PDF)

Other Resources from 2003:

List and Pics of Participants: 2003  
FTP File Area for misc documents and pictures: 2003
Darren Carollo takes 8 students to explore the Lewis & Clark Trail: (143K PDF)
What people are saying about QuarkNet: 2003

Lectures from the Workshop 2002:  11-14 June 2002

The Latest and Greatest: an update of the field (PDF 10M or ps.gz 9M )  from Pavel Nadolsky
Experimental High Energy Physics (PDF 1.1M )  from Yongsheng Gao


Expanding Universe Lab  (PowerPoint 103K) from Richard Lines

Man's Place in the Universe: Klein Bottles  (PowerPoint 91K) from Dirk Horst



Presentations  from Warren Puckett

Jewels of Modern Physics  (PowerPoint 31M)
Quantum Mechanics (PowerPoint 15M)
Pre-AP Quantum Mechanics (PowerPoint 19M)
Atomic  Spectra Lab (PowerPoint 6.8M)

NSF/DOE Review (Dec. 2001

Fred Olness' presentation:  PDF  Format  (1.8 MB)   or PPT Source  (gzip format 2.0 MB)


Lectures from the Workshop 2001: Held 4-15 June 2001

Tom Coan's Lectures on Particle Detectors (web page)

Ken Taylor's Lectures on Accelerating Particles: PDF  Format  (4.9 MB)   or PPT Source  (zip format 4.5 MB)

Larry Grise's Information about Rutherford Scattering Lab (text file)

Ryszard Stroynowski's Lectures on the Goals of Particle Physics: PDF  Format  (434KB)   or PPT Source  (764KB)

Tamara Trout's Lectures on General Relativity: : PDF  Format  (2.6 MB)   or PPT Source  (gzip format 89 KB)

Chaos Circuit: How To Build Using OpAmps: : PDF  Format  (402KB)   or ps.gz  (487KB)

Sandra Lyman's report on Particle Detectors in Physics: Word.doc format (71 KB)

Richard Lines' report on the Cosmic Ray Telescope: PDF  Format  (277 KB)   or PPT Source  (251KB)

Randy Scalise's note on the cantilevered blocks demonstration: Text file (3K)

Other Resources from 2001:

List and Pics of Participants: 2001  

What people are saying about QuarkNet: 2001

Evaluations from the QuarkNet Participants: 2001

FTP File Area for misc documents and pictures: 2001

SMU Press Release about the Workshop: 2001

SMU Press Release about Nobel laureate Leon Lederman visit 



Interesting Books:


Interesting CD ROM's:

The Particle Adventure: The whole thing in a single zip file:  (86M Zip File)


 


Interesting Videos:

Runaway Universe
Tuesday, April 8, 2003. The program follows the efforts of two rival teams of astronomers as they search for exploding stars, map out gigantic cosmic patterns of galaxies, and grapple with the ultimate question: What is the fate of the universe? Here's what you'll find online:

From the Geometry Center:

The Geometry Center is a mathematics research and education center at the University of Minnesota. The Center has a unified mathematics computing environment supporting math and computer science research, mathematical visualization, software development, application development, video animation production, and K-16 math education.

From  Fermilab

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory advances the understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and energy by providing leadership and resources for qualified researchers to conduct basic research at the frontiers of high energy physics and related disciplines.


Interesting Teacher Resources: 




Interesting Links:

QuarkNet Home Page

Fermilab Web-based Instructional Materials

Online educational resources for Physics teachers
A collection of Java applets from Italy

NTNU Virtual Physics Laboratory (Java Applets)
(seems not to work in Netscape, only Internet Explorer)

SMU Physics Home Page

Particle Data Group, LBL

The Particle Adventure

Contemporary Physics Education Project

Particle Physics Education and Information sites

LHC ATLAS Education Page

CERN Microcosom: Discover the World of Particles

Cool links: 2002

North American Large area Time coincidence Arrays (NALTA)


Fermi News, 1 Feb. 2001: High Schools Join the Search for Most Energetic Particles in the Universe

Klein Bottles: Get your higher-dimensional objects here. Credit cards accepted only in 3-dimensions.

SMU Center for Teacher Education: Professional Development Opportunities

Cool links: 2003

Bose-Einstein Condensate: suggested by Nathan Brown:

A NEW FORM OF MATTER: Bose-Einstein Condensation and the Atom Laser Wolfgang Ketterle, MIT
Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) Homepage

The Atom Builder, as suggested by Matthew Knee


Interesting Reports:


National Academy of Sciences Press webpage

Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards, National Research  Council,

National Academy of Sciences: Board On Physics And Astronomy Reports:

Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century
Physics in a New Era: An Overview (2001)
 


Link to the OLD QuarkNet page --- for historical reasons only.


E-Mail: olness@mail.physics.smu.edu