(Courtesy of Jim Struthers)
For details of the event, click here and here
For a report on the event by a participant click here.
Some photos below - any further photos received with pleasure! (Email jpeg to Andrew Morrison)
It is not very often, as a teacher, that one gets to spend the weekend in a European city, having enjoyed a free glass of champagne en route! However, that is exactly what happened to me on the weekend of the 1st to the 3rd of March in Geneva. I was at CERN along with 50 other physics teachers from nine countries across Europe, at a conference to inform and inspire teachers about particle physics. Visiting CERN has been an ambition of mine for a great many years, and I was thrilled to finally have the opportunity to go, with some financial assistance from PPARC.
The conference was organised by CERN in conjunction with ETT Division and PPARC (UK), with the aim of showing teachers the research currently being undertaken at CERN at the frontiers of science. Although CERN have run a High School Teachers Programme in the past, at three weeks duration it was thought to be too long to attract any but a very small minority of teachers. It is intended that the weekend conference will be an annual event and attract a wider range of teachers. CERN organiser Antonella Del Rosso says, 'Our philosophy is to show them today, what they will read in the text books of the future, so that they can inspire their pupils'.
The programme included talks about CERN and its activities as well as visits to prominent parts of the laboratory, such as the Compact Muon Solenoid(CMS), which currently under construction, and the Antiproton Decelerator (AD). There was the chance to get up to speed on current thinking on antimatter and neutrinos and learn a little about developing the technology of the WEB to transform it into the GRID, in order to be able to cope with the huge increase in data that will be generated by detectors when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is up and running in a few years' time. It is difficult to get a real feel for the scale of the enterprise at CERN without a visit; the size and ambitions for the whole enterprise are staggering. I particularly enjoyed seeing where the sections of the new accelerator ring are being made, with their powerful superconducting magnets, as well as the huge hole in the ground down which the CMS detector will be lowered when complete. The visit to the experimental hall of the Antiproton Decelerator was also very interesting. It provides the low energy antiprotons to produce antiatoms and is the place where antihydrogen atoms were produced recently.
We stayed in the very comfortable hostel accommodation available at CERN, which is also bookable for visits with school students. Needless to say there was also the chance to get to know some of the other people at the conference, over coffee and meals in the refectory as well as in the restaurants and bars of Geneva itself! On the Saturday night we had a wonderful evening sampling the delights of a traditional Swiss fondue and were able to thank Antonella Del Rosso for her immaculate organisation and attention to detail. Andrew Morrison from PPARC had also worked hard in planning the conference and supporting the large number of UK participants.
We all left on Sunday feeling very inspired by all we had seen and heard. The contacts with other teacher across Europe were particularly valued and, as a result of discussion, a network for the participants has been set up so that we can continue to develop collaborations with each other. We have also been set some homework, which is to devise a plan for a lesson or a series of lessons to introduce some of our students to particle physics. There is a prize of 1 000 Swiss Francs and an invitation to next year's conference, so I expect we will all be busy over the next few months. If you are thinking of visiting with students, it is certainly a good time to go, while the new detectors and the LHC are under construction. There is lots to see and marvel at. The CERN web site has useful information on how to go about organising and booking a visit, as well as lots of useful resources for teaching. http://www.cern.ch/ http://www.cern.ch/
Clare Thomson
(Courtesy of Jim Struthers)
LHC Testing
...and a good time was had by all!