What is CABS?

This site will help high school students and teachers find original, independent science research topics and questions that can be done without a professional lab...these can be done in a school lab or even in one's basement! The project ideas and research questions being developed and presented here have been vetted and could lead to true discoveries, and not just finding already known results. See our Welcome message. These are the types of projects that could be done and submitted to high school contests such as the Regeneron Science Talent Search, Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, or the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, and be competitive. If you have an idea to share, or a question about one of the project ideas, contact us at vondracekm@eths202.org.

Pages (on the right side of the screen) have lists of ideas for different types of science research projects, and clicking on one of those ideas will take you to posts with details and all sorts of information about that type of project. Get more information about why there is a need for CABS!

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Possible deviation from the Standard Model - some new Physics???

 From my old stomping grounds of Fermilab, about an hour outside Chicago and Evanston, comes measurements of muon magnetic properties that deviate significantly from the Standard Model, the theory we have that explains everything we know about the particles and forces of Nature, with the exception of gravity. 

Muons are in the electron family (200 times more massive...a heavy electron, basically, but it also decays with a lifetime of around 2.2 microseconds), and therefore 'spin' like the electron does. When you put spinning charged particles in a magnetic field, they precess...like a spinning top does if it is slightly tilted while spinning, and its whole axis rotates in a cone shape. By measuring these gyrations of muons as they spin in magnetic fields, precise measurements of their behavior are made. And these behaviors differ from what is predicted in the Standard Model. Some of the only theoretical explanations for such a difference involves new types of particles/matter. 

Check out this article if interested. This is also a good example of how discovery claims need to hold up to standards in a field built around error analysis! There needs to be a large enough gap between the predicted and lab results, but also a large enough gap between their error bars, of 5 sigma (5 standard deviations). The experiments still need more data to shrink these error bars a little smaller before they can claim discovery of some new physics, but it is getting close, and therefore more and more convincing that something new is out there!! 



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