Bringing Higgs Bosons into High Schools

July 4, 2012 was the date particle physicists announced the discovery of a Higgs boson. QuarkNet was ready with two powerful instructional activities that allowed high school teachers and their students to analyze datasets that included a candidate Higgs event. We will discuss ATLAS and CMS masterclasses and the CMS e-Lab. Preparatory activities ensure that students have the understandings necessary to learn how physicists discover knowledge and how they talk about their work. We will present data from independent evaluation that support our findings. QuarkNet is a long-term, national professional development and workforce development program that brings over 500 high school physics teachers and their students into the particle physics research community annually. Located at 53 universities and labs across the United States, the program is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.