Click on each game to get a screen grab. The pdf links provide all the content of section (e.g., Warp Speed) in a pdf file. The html links provide all the content of the section (e.g., Warp Speed) in a html file.

Warp Speed - Tools: Accelerators(pdf)(html) Race for Energy Here at Fermilab, acceleration is a very important concept that is used repeatedly in the experiments that the physicists perform. This activity, Race For Energy, introduces the student to the concept of acceleration by allowing them to roll a virtual ball down an inclined ramp to see it accelerate. There are velocity readouts that display the velocity at 4 equidistant points along the ramp, and an energy meter that displays the energy of the ball. As is necessary for any scientific experiment, there is also a control, which is the ball that rolls on the horizontal ramp. Push the Particle Particles pass through several different accelerators before reaching the large circular accelerator known as the Tevatron. One of the intermediate accelerators is known as the linear accelerator (or linac) because it pushes the particle forward in a straight line. This activity allows the student to play the role of the physicist in setting up the linear accelerator to give the particle the greatest possible acceleration.

Ghost Bustin' - Tools: Detectors (pdf)(html) Detector Detail Physicists find three-dimensional displays of detectors and the shower shapes particles make in them helpful for designing detectors. Students are invited to become part of a design group for a new particle detector. To prepare themselves, they investigate how particles look in the D0 Calorimeter. They Identify shower shapes of three particles. Identify those particles in collision debris (events). Learn about Calorimetry. Students observe 3D displays as animated gifs or quicktime movies depending on what what they choose and if the quicktime plugin is available on their machine. Particle Countin' Students operate a toy front-end loader to move a radioactive source to and from a Geiger counter wand which may be shielded by different materials. Students determine which source shoots the largest number of invisible bullets and which shield best protects the target from the bullets. Students may also notice the relationship between the distance between the source and the Geiger counter and the level of radioactivity. Particle Trappin' Physicists build detectors by trapping particles in layers of metal interleaved with small devices to measure the energy deposited in each layer. They can also identify particles by seeing which metal they are trapped in. The student's job is to build a detector to trap electrons and pions and to measure their energy. They can control the number of layers of two metals and the energy of the particles hitting the detector. They are challenged to discover the number of layers they need of each metal, not too many because the metal is expensive, but not too few because they might miss some of the energy deposited in the detector. Physicists measure the energy of the decay products of particles to discover the mass of the parent particle. In this case the students are building a detector that measures the energy of the decay products of the Z particle.

Code Crackin' - Methods (pdf)(html) Particle Graffiti In Particle Graffiti, students are physicists in a control room watching plots of data collected by the CDF Detector when protons and antiprotons collide in the Tevatron. Their job is to identify the particles (W, Z, Jets, and Junk events) before another event comes. These plots are the signatures of particles - "particle graffiti." They have one chance to answer and if they answer incorrectly they receive feedback on what the event was and how to recognize it. Anytime during the game they can click on the help button to get information on how to recognize the four types of events. Before they play the game, three screens introduce them to the game and provide a little background, namely that physicists have made precise measurements of the masses of the W and Z particles. Using the CDF detector and the D0 detector, scientists discovered the top quark, the last quark to be observed. ² Particle Pool Students create snooker ball events detected by a video camera mounted on the ceiling that plots the paths of the "particles" as stop-action spots displayed on a video monitor. After making their own events, they can play a game in which they identify which of three setups makes a pattern on the video monitor. They test their results by launching the ball and seeing if the pattern they get matches the one in the game. Particle Pinball Physicist use particles as probes and examine the patterns that the particles make as they scatter off targets. In this game, students watch waves of BBs launched at a hidden target and observe the pattern the BBs make when they drop into bins around the edge of a circular table. Students match their results by clicking on one of three patterns. There are three separate experiments corresponding to three different hidden targets. After the experiments, they are shown one more experiment and asked to identify the shape of the hidden target to double their Einstein Bucks. The targets include a set of pegs to resemble the pre-Bohr atomic mode, a square and a triangle

Law 'n Order - Ideas (pdf)(html) Baryon Bonanza The introduction discusses the particle zoo, the myriad of different particles physicists had discovered. With the Standard Model, physicists explain how the zoo can be made from a small number of basic particles, called quarks. Students select three quarks to form as many baryons as they can. They are challenged to fill out the whole chart of possible combinations that make baryons. Particle Families Students learn about particle families by trying to identify which imaginary particles belong to a family once they have seen four in the top row that do and four in the second row that don't belong to the family. Each game has a new family generated randomly. There are four levels: Introduction, Geometry 1, Geometry 2, and Physics. Students can play up to seven games per level, but they only get scores for the first four games per level. Only the last level contains real physics families. Nature's Scale This game introduces the idea that matter is composed of ever more basic structures somewhat like the Powers of Ten video. Students arrange structures in ascending order of complexity from quarks and leptons to a human by inserting eight white "piano keys," each representing a different structure, in a piano keyboard. When students put a key in the correct location, that note plays and a graphic of its structure lights up on the back panel. When all the keys are in the correct location, a scale and tune plays. Keys are stored in slots beside the keyboard. Four Forces This game introduces the role of forces in producing the structure of matter. Students learn about each of the four forces by dragging new slabs onto the face of Fermilab's Wilson Hall. During the activity, a Force Fiend randomly enters and takes away one of the four forces. Seeing the consequences of the loss of each force provides a graphic idea of the relative importance of each of the four forces to hold our world together.

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Last updated: Feb. 14, 2002