Trinity School teacher Tim Maloney, Daniel Rice and Jonathan Young analyze particle data at Cern in Geneva, Switzerland.
Seniors Daniel Rice of Chantilly and Jonathan Young of Vienna spent a week analyzing particle physics data from the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hedron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Rice and Young traveled to Geneva along with Fairfax County classmates from the Trinity School at Meadow View in Falls Church, including Jonathan Bentley, Jonathan Slye of Dunn Loring, PJ Hasson of Fairfax, Mollie Clement of Fairfax, Alex Maleski of Vienna, Mary Piescik of Vienna, Lydia Eng of Burke and Erica Wood of Clifton. The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator and is managed by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. After using the data for its purposes, CERN makes the data available to the public on its website.
Using CERN’s software, which creates a 3-D image of the particle collisions, TSMV students were trained to analyze the data to determine the scientific quality of each event. Overall, TSMV students analyzed a total of 400 events. Tim Maloney, TSMV physics teacher, was pleased that the students had the opportunity to travel to CERN. Maloney believes that the experience would allow the students to understand the complications of real-world data collection instead of learning from the security of a textbook. Data collected by the seniors is being used in collaboration with data collected by seniors at TSMV’s sister campuses in South Bend, Ind. and Minneapolis, Minn. A total of 2,000 events were analyzed by the students at all three schools. The data was collected on a shared spreadsheet, and each senior downloaded the data to his or her laptop to create a MatLab program to analyze it. Trinity School at Meadow View is a classically based Christian school serving students in grades seven through 12 in Falls Church.