Fermilab Today

	Friday, Aug. 5, 2011

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Calendar

Have a safe day!

Friday, Aug. 5
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speakers: Federico Sforza, INFN Pisa
Title: On the Road to Higgs→b-bbar: Diboson Reconstruction in lν+Heavy Flavor Jets at CDF

Monday, Aug. 8
PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINARS WILL RESUME IN THE FALL
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II

Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Friday, Aug. 5

- Breakfast: Chorizo burrito
- Old-fashioned ham & bean soup
- Philly-style chicken
- Chicken pot pie
- Baked fish over rice
- Roasted veggie & provolone panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Carved baked ham

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, Aug. 5
Dinner
- Cucumber cups w/ crab filling
- Seared lamb chops w/ Dijon mustard & herbs
- Hasselback potatoes
- Sautéed spinach w/ garlic & lemon
- Chocolate mousse cake

Wednesday, Aug. 10
Lunch
- Spring roll salad w/ red curry shrimp
- Pineapple flan

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Teachers give old methods the boot at QuarkNet camp

High school teachers from all over the country gathered at Fermilab in July for a one-week workshop as part of the QuarkNet program. Teachers worked together in groups to solve physics problems using real LHC data.

Boot camp usually brings to mind the mud crawling, wall scaling tasks of military freshmen. But boot camp this summer at Fermilab had a very different connotation. For a week in July, 41 high school physics teachers from all over the U.S. came together for a crash course in scientific collaboration.

“This is a great experience. I’m here because I wanted to learn more about the science and how it is done,” said Jim Ferrara, a physics instructor from Bernards High School in New Jersey. “I want to bring that back to students and be able to excite them about what we’re doing.”

QuarkNet is a program connecting high school physics teachers and their students with particle physicists in universities and national laboratories throughout the U.S. At this year’s QuarkNet Boot Camp, teams of teachers divided into small color-coded groups analyzed LHC data to tackle physics problems, such as finding the invariant mass of the Z boson. This was the first year that the Boot Camp participants had used real data, which is messier and more challenging than the simulated data used in the workshop’s two previous incarnations.

“Using real data from the LHC stretches people in terms of concepts. This is a higher level of data, so it was nice to see that the participants arrived at their destination,” said Ken Cecire, QuarkNet staff member.

- Rhianna Wisniewski

In Brief

EAP offers August webinar

Fermilab's Employee Assistance Program will offer a webinar on Aug. 16 titled “Part of the Equation." The webinar will address how to create a home environment that supports a child’s learning, set high academic expectations and maintain good communication with your child’s teachers. It will be broadcast at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Anyone interested in viewing the event must register in advance for the program through the Fermilab EAP website with the User ID "Fermilab" and the password "eap". This event is one of the monthly one-hour webinars offered by Fermilab’s Employee Assistance Program.

To view the flyer in Spanish, please click here.

From ILC NewsLine

Good gradients in seconds flat

A constant acceleration gradient along many thousands of particle bunches provides for a particle beam’s sure-footed climb to higher energies, readying the beam for collision by providing the same acceleration for each bunch. But constant gradients don’t come naturally for accelerating cavities, the elements that pave the particles’ ascending path. A cavity has to be poked and prodded into maintaining a good gradient from one particle bunch to the next.

Fermilab scientists have developed a method for getting cavity gradients to stay put. Last February, as part of high-current beam experiments conducted for the ILC at DESY’s FLASH facility in Germany, the team successfully modified each tested cavity to achieve constant gradients for any beam current of up to 5 milliamps (mA).

—Leah Hesla

In Memoriam

Homer Clover - June 18

Homer Clover at Fermilab in 1981.

Retired Fermilab employee Homer Clover, 92, died on June 18. He started work at Fermilab on Sept. 20, 1969, as a designer in the Booster Group. At the time of his retirement in June 1986, he was a member of the Civil Construction Group.

In his time at Fermilab, Clover worked on many projects—including the Tevatron Construction Group in 1981. In a FermiNews interview for his retirement, Clover describes that time as very interesting and full of activity.

Clover is survived by his wife, Joan Clover, children Brian Clover, Ada Brazeau, former FESS Computer Professional employee Kevin Clover and Louise Parker. A private service was held.

Photo of the Day

South Dakota students visit

Davis-Bahcall Scholars from South Dakota toured Fermilab on July 22. The group of students were chosen out of 80 applicants to participate in a five-week program studying physics. Front row, from left: Amanda Finley, Kenneth Umenthum, Daniel Pfeifle, Ethan Pauley, Joel Krause, William Hinker, Steve Gabriel. Back row, from left: Deirdre Beck, Virginia Bergman, Nate Harding, Janani Ragothaman, Peggy Norris, Jessica Johnson. Photo: Reidar Hahn

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