Adventures in Physics

 Today was focused on a number of Science Week sessions on ARIEL with the highlight being a tour of the Centre for Molecular and Materials Science (CMMS) with Iain McKenzie. This morning's talks started with a look at what they are looking at for early science investigations at ARIEL, including further research into X-ray FLASH radiotherapy. FLASH radiotherapy is a fascinating potential for curing cancer. Researchers this week have been talking about how it was first done decades ago, had some promising results, but everyone figured it was too good to be true and got shelved in favour of other courses of treatment. Now, FLASH is being seen as the next big thing in cancer treatment, but there is still lots of hesitancy as researchers are still trying to figure out the exact mechanism by which it works. Until they get it all figured out, there is a lot of cautious optimism and it's a high priority for further research. After this session, I met up with Iain and he took me over to...

 Today, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Christian Diget, of the University of York, and two of his grad students, Cameron Angus and Jennifer Sanchez Rojo. Together, they ran me through the Nuclear Physics Masterclasses at https://sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/bindingblocks/pre-16 for grades 9-10 students and https://sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/bindingblocks/post-16 for grades 11-12 students. Together we went through Module 1: Energy and Decay with a focus on how they use Lego blocks to create a section of the chart of radionuclides. Here, the heights represent the mass excess of the nuclide. From there we can combine atoms to figure out how much energy would be released in a fusion process (such as the ones inside stars). This approach gives students a very tangible way of determining binding energies (each layer of Lego bricks is approximated to 25TJ/kg) as opposed to the painful formulas and excessive number of digits in each value. We then talked about a little g...

 Today started off with a Science Week presentation on Particle Physics.  This started with a presentation from Nausheen Shah on The Status and Future of Particle Physics. Here she spoke about the standard model of particle physics and work currently being done to try to break it. She also looked at the Higgs boson and how it could be possible that Higgs field is actually a two-component doublet.  She also shared current thoughts on dark matter and where we go from here. Chukman So talked about the Alpha-G experiment at CERN and how TRIUMF is working on that experiment.  Particularly interesting was seeing how they combine an antiproton with a positron to create antihydrogen. Marco Valente spoke on TRIUMF's contributions to CERN's ATLAS experiment in developing and building the small wheel and ITK inner detector. In the afternoon, I got to sit down with Dr. Valery Radchenko to talk about his work with radionuclides, creating them at TRIUMF, and their uses in medicine...

 It's been a few years since my last blog post, but I intend on bringing my blog back to life this year and thought I should start with my current adventure: a week at TRIUMF as part of the CAP Excellence in Teaching Physics Award! Arriving here this morning, I was greeted by Jesse Abney, the Program Manager for Outreach & Engagement.  He took me on a quick tour of the facility and got me set up with keycard and dosimeter so that I can further explore TRIUMF throughout the week.  Seeing this facility and starting to learn about how it works was an incredible experience! TRIUMF has a rich history in Canada, having been formed in 1968 and the cyclotron first firing up at the end of 1974.  Today, TRIUMF has been repurposed many times over to find new cutting-edge purposes with this extraordinary physics machine.  There are now a wide variety of research and industry experiments taking place, from precise measurements of isotopes to curing cancer to quantum mate...

It's hard to believe that it's been over a year since I was at CERN for HST2019!  So much has happened since then, the biggest being COVID and the tremendous impact it's had on our world.  Throughout this time there have been so many challenges.  When we had an idea that schools would inevitably shut down, it became a questions of how do I take a program that I've worked so hard to make hands-on and turn it into something online, keep students engaged, and how do I create a grading system that is fair to all students in this new environment.  When grades were frozen on March 20 it was a question of how to motivate students that already have their credit to keep going. I feel that in terms of moving the program online and finding a grading system that was fair, I was somewhat successful.  I created "Quarantine Physics: The Game Plan!" and my students responded well to it. With this I created a points-based system for each chapter and tried to give students as m...