Dear XX,
On behalf of the IceCube Collaboration, I’m pleased to invite you and your students to participate in the first edition of the IceCube Masterclass program.
The IceCube Collaboration is launching a new educational program, which will give high school students the opportunity to learn about neutrinos and what they tell us about the universe while discovering a unique experiment: IceCube, a cubic-kilometer neutrino detector buried in Antarctica’s ice.
The Wisconsin IceCube Particle Physics Center (WIPAC) at UW–Madison will be hosting this one-day masterclass in Madison on May XX, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. We are inviting 11th and 12th grade students to join us at WIPAC. More information (including registration) can be found at icecube.wisc.edu/masterclass.
The masterclass is a unique event where high school students , and accompanying teachers, are invited to join IceCube for a few hours to experience being a real researcher by performing an analysis using IceCube data. They will also meet active physics researchers and will link up with student peers from other countries.
In the morning, the students will be introduced to IceCube through a lecture. After having lunch with lecturers and tutors, they will work in a guided activity that will allow them to reproduce a recent research result published by the collaboration in Science. The students will participate in a web conference with the South Pole and, finally, they will discuss their results in a virtual meeting with other students from across the US and from other countries in Europe.
The IceCube detector was completed in December 2010 after 7 years of construction. Last November, the collaboration announced the observation of 28 very high-energy particles that constitute the first solid evidence for neutrinos produced beyond our solar system, in the most extreme environments of our universe. These results, published in Science, have opened a new era in astronomy.
Your students will be able to reproduce part of this research by joining us for the IceCube Masterclass. Registration is free but mandatory, and a limited number of places are available.
Do not hesitate to contact us for further details or to arrange the logistics of your participation.
We are looking forward to working with you to provide this amazing and fruitful experience for your students
XXXX
YYYYY
Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC)
222 W. Washington Ave
Madison, WI, 53703
e-mail: masterclass@icecube.wisc.edu