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Physics workshop schools secondary teachers in high-tech research

By David J. Craig

At the beginning of each school year, the expressions on the faces of students in Tom Donnelly’s 12th-grade physics class at North Quincy High are as tremulous as a proton speeding toward a collision in a particle accelerator. When he discusses current ideas about the origin of the universe, relativity theory, or genetic research, however, eyes light up.

"A lot of kids come into physics scared that it’s going to be too difficult," says Donnelly, a teacher for 30 years. "It is very conceptual, and a lot of them are turned off by the math. But if you get students thinking about things like the big bang and cosmology, you can really spark something in them because it shows them that science isn’t all figured out already."

High school science teachers from around the state received an education in such contemporary scientific thought this summer, during the Boston Area Quarknet Workshop. From August 7 to 23, 15 teachers attended lectures and labs at BU and Northeastern University on high-energy particle physics, which is the study of subatomic matter.

They used state-of-the-art research equipment in the Physics Research Building, analyzed data collected by BU and Northeastern University faculty at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill., and were shown related experiments they could employ in their own classrooms, such as one that demonstrates the fact that light sometimes acts as a wave, and at other times a particle.

"The long-term goal isn’t to teach high school students particle physics per se, but to give them and their teachers a glimpse at the research that’s going on and to get them excited," says Ulrich Heintz, an assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences and one of the co-organizers of the workshop. "We want to enable the teachers to talk to their students about these ideas and to answer questions they might be asked about some current research that appears in the newspaper."

The workshop was part of the national Quarknet initiative, which aims to familiarize teachers and students from high schools across the United States with particle physics. It is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

BU’s involvement began last year when it hosted Richard Dower, of Roxbury Latin School, in an eight-week research assistantship. Dower worked on Heintz’s research team in its much-publicized attempt to further understand the so-called "top quark" (a particle identified in 1995 by a group of scientists that included Heintz, CAS Associate Professor of Physics John Butler, and CAS Assistant Professor of Physics Meenakshi Narain) at Fermilab and to identify the yet-unobserved subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson. Charles Gliniewicz of Mansfield High School held a similar position working with Darien Wood, a physics professor at Northeastern who is also involved in research at Fermilab. Both Dower and Gliniewicz returned to Boston to mentor the 15 teachers taking part in the workshop this summer.

Participants were not required to have previously studied particle physics, which physics majors typically cover for the first time in graduate school. Not surprisingly, many of the teachers initially found the material intimidating, according to Heintz.

"I’m not a particle physicist, that’s for sure," says Norm Mitchell, of Silver Lake Regional High in Kingston, Mass. "I’m a classical physics instructor. But now I have a new vocabulary, and I think I’ll be able to lead my kids to an understanding of what the Higgs field is, and how it is what is customarily known as a force field, and how amazing that is. And I’ll be able to leave them with a set of questions that are truly perplexing."

In addition to receiving an overview of particle physics, the teachers learned about neutrino physics, which is the study of several recently discovered particles believed to have no mass or very little mass, and cosmic ray physics, the study of what happens when high-energy particles from outer space enter the earth’s atmosphere. They also were acquainted with modern research tools such as particle detectors and the high-energy particle accelerators used at Fermilab, in which opposing beams of protons and antiprotons are brought into collision at a combined energy of nearly two trillion electrovolts.

In addition, the teachers completed several well-known lab exercises that require equipment unaffordable to most schools, according to Gliniewicz.

"They might be able to show their students a video of the Michelson-Morley Interferometer, which demonstrates the constant speed of light," he says. "But the equipment you need to perform the experiment is the Cadillac of lab equipment, and few schools can afford it. So even though the teachers would have been familiar with the experiment, most of them hadn’t done it themselves before this workshop. By getting the hands-on experience, they’ll have a bit more confidence discussing it with their students."

Heintz is currently attempting to secure funding for a similar workshop next year independent of Quarknet, whose funding ends this year. In addition, several teachers who participated in the workshop are creating a Web site that will serve as a guide for high school teachers interested in learning about particle physics.

"One of the great things about a workshop like this is that it gives me and my colleagues a chance to expose people outside of our research community to the work we do," says Heintz. "That’s very hard with a subject like particle physics because most people think it’s completely removed from everyday life and is something they couldn’t possibly understand. Teachers are the perfect target group for us to get our work into public view."

7 February 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations