Wycombe Abbey Physicists Visit CERN
9 May 2024 - Academic
Over the Easter break, a group of budding scientists travelled to Geneva for the much-anticipated visit to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research.
As soon as the girls touched down in Geneva, they enjoyed some sightseeing and fondu at a local restaurant, before they got some rest ahead of a busy day at CERN.
CERN boasts a brand-new visitor centre full of interactive exhibits and models to help explain how the particle accelerator works and how useful data is selected by the computer systems at the various detectors to enable scientists to discover new particles. The group met up with their guides for the tour and were taken to a variety of sites across the campus, including the main control centre, a magnet testing facility and one of the historical detectors. The main particle accelerator is a 27-kilometre ring called the Large Hadron Collider, which is the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. Using superconducting magnets, it accelerates bunches of protons in opposite directions up to 99.99% of the speed of light before focusing them to collide inside one of the giant detectors. It is where some of modern physics’ most significant discoveries have been made, including the 2012 identification of the Higgs boson, the culmination of a 50-year search. The Higgs particle gives mass to all other particles. The large collection of empty champagne bottles in the control room gave a hint of the celebrations that happen when discoveries are made!
The sheer scale of the facility at CERN has to be seen to be believed and hopefully this trip will have inspired more pupils to visit in the future and be involved in particle research and future discoveries.
Catherine Dowdall
Teacher of Physics
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