Welcome to the Education section of the MSU High Energy Theory website. This site supports our group's engagement with research students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, K-12 students, teachers, and the general public.

The tab for "Research Students" provides access to resources for high-energy theory students, including background materials on Quantum Field Theory, and links to a variety of journals and research tools.

The tab labeled "Outreach Activities" gives an overview of the various ways in which group members are engaged with students, teacher, and the public at the local and national levels. For further details and access to materials we have created or assembled for hands-on experiments with small groups and lecture activities with larger groups, visit the QUEST project website.

The "Links" tab highlights to other outreach resources in the high-energy physics community, many provided by (inter)national particle and nuclear physics laboratories.

Online Resources for High-Energy Physics Students

1. Resources associated with the famous course on Quantum Field Theory given by the late Prof. Sidney Coleman (Harvard University)
   • Videos of Coleman's lectures
   • PDFs of Dr. Brian Hill's notes from Coleman's course: Part 1, Part 2
   • Typeset versions of Coleman's note for part of the first semester of QFT
   • PDFs of the problem sets & Brian Hill's solutions from Coleman's course are available locally. Ask Prof. Chivukula, Schmidt, Simmons, or Yuan for access.


2. Resources associated with other Quantum Field Theory Courses
   • Prof. Eduardo Fradkin's on-line QFT course.
   • Prof. David Tong's on-line course. This includes typeset notes, problem sets and solutions.
   • TASI 2008 lectures on "The Dawn of the LHC Era"
   • "Diploma Programme" lectures from ICTP (Trieste). This includes videos of courses dating back to 2007, and also screenshots of the blackboard that one can examine in detail to read the lecturer's notes. The courses include QED, group theory, particle physics, relativity, and also non-HET areas of physics.
   • A review of various QFT books - From Griffiths to Peskin: a lit review for beginners. In particular, the books by Mark Srednicki and Lowell Brown use an approach fairly similar to that taken by Coleman in his lectures.


3. Other resources related to High-Energy Physics
   • inSPIRE database of paper, peoples, institutions, conferences, jobs ...
   • arXiv preprint database
   • Particle Data Group repository of reviews, results, constants...
   • Interactions portal for science communicators
   • American Physical Society
   • American Institute of Physics
   • Links to many HEP laboratories world-wide
   • A few of the major high-energy physics journals: Physical Review D, Physical Review Letters, Nuclear Physics B, Physics Letters, Physics Reports, JHEP

Members of the High-Energy Theory group at MSU engage in a variety of engagement and public outreach activities throughout the year in the East Lansing area. We are also involved with events coordinated by national laboratories and professional organizations or held in conjunction with physics conferences worldwide.

Faculty working with Undergraduates

HET faculty members collaborate with undergraduate students each year to create educational materials, test them at outreach events in the East Lansing area, and revise them based on experience. The materials presented on the QUEST website have resulted from these collaborations.

Local Outreach Activities in which HET group members regularly participate

• East Lansing Girls' Math Science Conference
• MSU Grandparents University
• MSU Lyman Briggs College's Spartan Science Day, as described in this talk
• MSU Physics and Astronomy Research Opportunities for Undergraduates
• MSU Physics and Astronomy Society of Physics Students
• MSU Visiting International Professionals Program

National Organizations Sponsoring Outreach Activities in which HET group members are active

• APS Division of Particles and Fields
• Aspen Center for Physics
  
• LHC Theory Initiative
  
• QuarkNet

These websites provide information on particle physics for educators, students, and the general public.

• The Particle Adventure is an interactive tour of quarks, neutrinos, antimatter, extra dimensions, dark matter, accelerators, and particle detectors from the Particle Data Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
• The Particle Detectives is a site created for inquisitive 14-19 year olds and their teachers who want to learn about the physics of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
• Interactions.org is a communication resource featuring the latest information from the world's particle physics laboratories.
• The Fermilab Science Education Office located at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory provides science education resources and activities for educators, physicists, students, and the general public.
• Fermilab's Particle Physics Timeline shows how questions about nature's building blocks have been explored with a variety of tools over the last century.
• The SLAC Virtual Visitor Center introduces the general public, particularly students and teachers to the science studied at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the tools used to investigate that science.
• The CERN Education Website offers information about teacher programmes and education resources for schools.
• The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University offers extensive Outreach programs to K-12 students, educators, and the public.
• The Students and Educators portion of the International Linear Collider website describes the scientific purpose of this proposed new experimental facility.