Comments for Building STEM Community

Comment on Speed of light and STEM culture by Tom Loughran

Tom Loughran — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:30:29 +0000

Thanks, Val:) For updates on the superluminal neutrino story, see these CERN press release updates.

Comment on Speed of light and STEM culture by vgoss

vgoss — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:14:35 +0000

From reading your words, I can feel the excitement, Tom. I’m glad to learn about the unexpected timing for both the QuarkNet Teachers and CERN! Thanks ;>)

Comment on Explore particle physics–or your own–data with ManyEyes by Tom Loughran

Tom Loughran — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:31:32 +0000

Errata: M is the total energy (roughly the combined kinetic energy) of the decaying particles IN THE REST FRAME OF THE PARENT. Sorry. So if you were surfing the J/Psi, riding along with it and watching its decay, M is roughly sum of the kinetic energy of the back-to-back muons into which the J/Psi will decay. (Cool question number one: why are these decay products back-to-back in the rest frame of their decaying parent?)

Comment on Explore particle physics–or your own–data with ManyEyes by Tom Loughran

Tom Loughran — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:27:49 +0000

Thanks for taking the bait, Val:) Physical meaning: P (x, y, z, t) is momentum for each particle (1, 2) in a pair that is produced by the decay of some neutral, short-lived particle (in this case, the J/Psi, a bound state of a charm/anticharm quark pair) into to leptons (a muon/antimuon pair). So Px1 is the X component of the momentum of the first muon. X, Y, Z are directional coordinates, t is the x-y plane. E is total energy, which in this high-energy physics context is approximately the same as the particle’s kinetic energy. M is the Mass equivalent (since E=mc^2) of the combined kinetic energy of the pair of daughter particles, which is the same as the rest mass (the energy equivalent of the mass of the parent at rest.) Q is charge. Eta is the angle along the beam line through the cylindrical detector; phi is the angle in the x-y plane (orthogonal to the beam line.) That’s roughly the physical meaning of the parameters. The fun part is that you can begin with the data, explore relationships, and ask questions before knowing very much. But this account of the physical meaning is eventually necessary:)

Comment on Explore particle physics–or your own–data with ManyEyes by vgoss

vgoss — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:19:27 +0000

px1, py2, E2.

I will think of this set of coordinates as ‘the one that got away’…

Really, what is the physical meaning of the isolated particle.

Comment on Step-wise implementation of TOW, while thinking through our social media strategy by tjloughran

tjloughran — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:29:10 +0000

Val,

As you note between the lines, 10x is perhaps an unreasonable metric for external blogging for graduate students. However, some experience in other corners of the bloggosphere that grows over time would be useful:)

Comment on Step-wise implementation of TOW, while thinking through our social media strategy by vgoss

vgoss — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:47:59 +0000

Hi Tom,

I’m up for “tow” changing lanes.

My intuition tells me that you are sensitive to some delicate bloggers/subscribers…that’s cool; good looking out.

Please do me a favor, send me Kate’s topic with her words as she suggested, and I’ll get the popcorn party stated.

Also, regarding the social media piece, I think that we’re all following suggestion #1 “within” our community. Are you thinking that we might want to blog on other sites ten time more than we do on our own site as a way to increase traffic on our site? Interesting idea

Comment on Communicating about science: lessons from the climate change discussion by vgoss

vgoss — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:42:56 +0000

Inspiring! Wheel-of-Fortune in the discussion of ‘PDF’, and fire insurance to illustrate risk management for environmental changes are interesting examples. Communicating science in terms that anyone can understand is one of the skills that I’m most interested in sharpening. Yep, I’m going to poke around on this site a bit to learn more.

Comment on Since confusion is the mother of learning… by Patrick Mooney

Patrick Mooney — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:56:04 +0000

Tom, I don’t know why the difference, but the following observations have me wondering: (1) why are there so many more entries in the lower plot and (2) the sharp rise in the lower plot suggest that a 40GeV/c transverse momentum electron trigger might have been implemented. (This is the sort of trigger one might use for Ws and Zs.) These observations lead to the following 2 questions: (1) is the upper plot somehow a small subset of the electrons in the lower plot? and (2) Is the sharp rise in the lower plot a triggering effect? Pat

Comment on The 2010 Education Project in Bahrain by tloughran

tloughran — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:11:51 +0000

Aprell,

I think that the Bahrainis recognize that their workforce has got to be globally competitive, which requires an education that is globally competitive. That education must be informed by best practices from across the globe, and the conference aims to identify, discuss, refine and implement these practices. These include experience with collaboration on a global scale and leadership by influence, both of which the Bahrainis are practicing by taking on concerns which include their own immediate needs but extend more broadly to the long-term good of the whole. I’m pretty impressed by this crowd, as perhaps you can tell:)