Bringing particle physics to the introductory physics lab

Through an undergraduate physics curriculum, students are rarely offered even glimpses into the physics concepts, skills, and practices with which professional physicists engage (a "curriculum gap"). For learning about experimental particle physics (EPP), for example, a standard physics curriculum may include only one or two optional particle physics courses at the junior or senior level, which typically focus on theoretical, rather than experimental, concepts. While much effort has been made to bring EPP activities to the general public, systematic physics education research evaluating how to close the curriculum gap (that is, how to bring cutting-edge EPP to undergraduate classrooms) remains sparse. In this talk, I will outline our efforts to redesign an introductory physics lab course to engage students in a semester-long cosmic ray muon detector project and present preliminary findings from a pilot implementation.