Hi-Phi, November 2007, issue 166

In this issue...

• 21st European Particle Physics Outreach Group Meeting, CERN, 4-5th October
• Particle Detectives go LIVE

21st European Particle Physics Outreach Group Meeting, CERN, 4-5th October

The agenda and presentations for the meeting are available on the EPPOG website (link opens in a new window).

Ray Mathias attended the meeting and reported progress on the UK LHC (Large Hadron Collider) Communications Strategy. As part of the presentation he described several of the resources STFC has produced, including the cartoon book - the Little Book of the Big Bang - the particle detectives website and the "In Search of Giants2 film series. There was considerable interest in translating these materials into other European languages and STFC are now establishing how best to facilitate CERN member state gaining access to the materials in order to translate and reproduce them.

The dates for next year's Masterclasses were agreed as the 28th February to the 14th March.

Considerable time was spent describing and discussing Masterclasses as a result it was decided that:

• the exercises will continue to be mainly based on LEP (The Large Electron Positron Collider) events
• new exercises will be tested, possibly based on alpha-s and W pair studies
• LHC events might be introduced by using the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) 3-D event display developed for education and outreach purposes

Two very interesting models were demonstrated:

• a three neutrino oscillation demonstration based on a 3-pendulum model (for details and a video, check Michael Kobel's presentation on the site above)
• a semi-portable, robust and low cost cosmic muon detector built by school students

Particle Detectives go LIVE

The STFC sponsored education package on "how science works" and particle physics, which features the LHC - has gone live.

Particle Detectives website (link opens in a new window) site was soft launched on the 28th September and hard-launched the week beginning the 8th October when a flier was mailed out to all Heads of Science in UK secondary schools. A second flier is planned for the middle of January and the site will be advertised in the Institute of Physic's December mailing to their affiliated schools.