Jul 24
Last week, the NDQC went international. High school students from China and Brazil came to Notre Dame for an educational camp that included a two day workshop at QuarkNet. The CMS Data group was given the opportunity to give a two and a half hour seminar on the CMS detector at the LHC to these …
Jul 23
There is no doubt that some truly unbelievable things exist beyond our universe. Space, however, is so vast that we have experienced only a fraction of everything that exists out there. Everyday astronomers are trying to learn more and more about what exists beyond Earth. The NDQC Astro group is also trying to learn more …
Jul 23
Looking toward the future of our lives, it looks clear that technology will be a key part. Seemingly at the heart of all technology comes social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The importance of social networking continues to grow every day and the NDQC knows that. For the past few weeks, I have been working on …
Jul 17
The educational camp “Sensing the Cosmos” has been going on the past few days on campus. Elementary school students from across the South Bend area have come to Notre Dame to learn what they can about the universe beyond Earth. As would be expected, participating in a program like this involves the use of telescopes. …
Jul 11
Next week, high school students from China and Brazil will descend on NDQC aiming to learn a bit about particle physics. The students will learn what exactly goes on in the CMS detector during a collision and how to analyze the data plots that the collisions produce. Teachers and students who have already spent time analyzing some …
Jul 03
At NDQC, there are two projects concerning the CMS collaboration at the LHC: CMS Upgrade and CMS Data. Both of those projects have enjoyed a long fifteen year relationship with the CMS. In an earlier blog I posted about one side of the relationship that NDQC has with CMS which is the manufacture of parts for the detector. The other side …
Jul 01
At one time or another, we have all “heard” our name called in public places when in reality no one was actually calling us. It can be a problem when we mistake something we actually hear or see with something else. When dealing with cosmic ray detectors, background noise can be an issue as well. …
Jun 28
Show at the DVT For many people, myself included, what goes on at the LHC is at least a little beyond comprehension. At the Notre Dame Digital Visualization Theatre (DVT), students and teachers from the NDQC are trying to make the material a bit more accessible. They are in the process of putting together a …
Jun 27
The weather in South Bend this week has not lent itself well to outdoor sky observations. That has left the Astro group here at NDQC with a little less to do than they would like. They are, however, finding ways to learn during the day by observing online sky charts and such. They have been …
Jun 26
Computer Simulation of Collision involving a Higgs (CERN) Last summer, physicists at the LHC at CERN believe they made a monumental discovery in the field of particle physics. They think they found the Higgs boson which has been sought after for almost the past 50 years. In simple terms, the Higgs explains why certain particles have mass …
