College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

QuarkNet

Ames High School and the physics department are working to bring research into the classroom.

John Hauptman's dream may soon come true thanks to QuarkNet, an international project funded by the National Science Foundation.

The ISU professor of physics is part of an effort to bring forefront physics research into high school classrooms. QuarkNet partners students and teachers with experiments at the world's most powerful accelerators, located at CERN in Switzerland and Fermilab in Illinois.

One of four Iowans involved in the project, Hauptman is joined by Nural Akchurin, a University of Iowa researcher; Pete Bruecken, a Bettendorf High School teacher; and Jeff Dilks, a physics instructor at Ames High School.

Last summer the four physicists were among a contingent of educators working on the QuarkNet project.

"This is the first time anything like this has been done," Hauptman said. "While NSF has always been concerned with science education, QuarkNet directly brings high school teachers into research projects.

"This is a great new thing in education."

Hauptman's dream is to eventually involve high school students into research groups. Dilks and Hauptman got a jumpstart on that dream last summer by participating in QuarkNet, which established Iowa as one of the 12 centers at universities and laboratories across the nation.

Both Dilks and Hauptman feel these types of projects are important to bring research and teaching together.

"There's been a real disconnect between what's going on in research and what's going on in the high school classroom," Dilks said. "QuarkNet is a nice, new approach to improving high school science education."

The Iowa QuarkNet center is in the second year of its two-year commitment. Last summer, Dilks participated in a one-week orientation workshop at Fermilab in preparation for the summer research assignments. Once back in Ames Dilks and Hauptman began constructing an incredibly fast particle detector with the assistance of several individuals including Dilks' daughter Katie and Hauptman's son Michael. The particle detector was designed to collect energy and spatial information at the speed of light and then empty the calorimeter of signal in a nanosecond.

Dilks and Hauptman went to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland last summer where they tested the calorimeter and analyzed data from it.

Back in Ames this school year, Dilks incorporated what he learned from his research experiences in the classroom.

"The intent of the program is to give high school teachers experiences so when they go back to their high schools they can relate those experiences in the classroom," he said.

One of those experiences Dilks learned was that not every experiment is right the first time.

"I designed an activity in the lab and actually pushed the students to do it the wrong way," he said, "and then came back to the activity a few days later and had them figure out how to do it the right way."

While Dilks has been incorporating his QuarkNet experiences into his classroom, he and Hauptman will take it a step further this summer. In year two of the project, each of the QuarkNet teachers will invite 10 other teachers from their area into the project. These associate teachers participate in a three-week institute, which is planned and
hosted by the QuarkNet teachers and their local physicist mentors.

By the time the project ends in five years, as many as 700 high school physics teachers across the nation will be involved in QuarkNet.

"If QuarkNet is a success, and I think it will be, then it will basically tell teachers that they don't have to spend all their time with the textbook," Hauptman said. "They can actually go out and do experiments and do them at the world's best laboratories."