1807 - Ghost Particles : Neutrinos for 5th Graders?

Author / Creator

AAPT WM21 (2021)

Conferences

AAPT WM21 A1.7 Quantum Physics in Introductory Courses (2021)

Available as

Online

Summary

Around the 5th grade, students make a conceptual leap in their understanding of the world around them. In the NGSS, it's at this time that students should be mastering the idea that "matter is made...

Around the 5th grade, students make a conceptual leap in their understanding of the world around them. In the NGSS, it's at this time that students should be mastering the idea that "matter is made up of particles too small to be seen". How can we help them make this conceptual change?  The Sanford Underground Research Facility has developed a curriculum unit to do just that. The unit begins with a phenomenon that all students have seen but maybe not thought about deeply: salt dissolving in water. What happens to the salt? They investigate this phenomenon through the lens of the crosscutting concept 'Scale, Proportion and Quantity'. They develop models to help understand the size of atoms then extend those models to the size of neutrinos. Using these models help students make sense of why scientists need 70,000 tons of argon in future neutrino detectors. 

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