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2008 visit - documents for download 2007 visit to CERN The annual physics department visit to CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, took place this year from 25 th -28 th November and 24 upper sixth students travelled. On the first morning, they were given an excellent overview of the physical principles of detector and accelerator operation by Katharine Leney, a second year PhD student at Liverpool University , who is one of over two thousand members of the ATLAS collaboration. She engaged the students in role play, showed them detector modules, tested them with puzzles and bribed them with chocolate in a stimulating session. That afternoon a further conference led by Mark Tyrell, one of CERN's official guides, gave us an overview of the structure of CERN, a unique international organisation, and its 54 year history. Then came the much anticipated highlight - the descent 100m underground into the ‘pit' (or more accurately, cavern) in which the mighty ATLAS detector is nearing completion. At 7000 tonnes in weight and the size of a five-storey building, this giant experiment will attempt to discover the Higgs particle when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) starts smashing protons together in May 2008. On the second day, we toured some of the smaller (but no less important) accelerators and experiments, learning in particular how antimatter is being produced and studied, and then visited the computing centre see how CERN is preparing to store and process a volume of data which will correspond to 1% of the information generated globally each year once the LHC starts up. At the heart of this endeavour is the plan to network up to 100,000 computers worldwide in a project known as the ‘Grid', with CERN at its heart. A tour of the Microcosm, which has interactive demonstrations, exhibits of past experiments and documentaries about CERN's Nobel Prize winners completed an intensive and exhausting couple of days. As befits a stay in a cosmopolitan city such as Geneva , we sampled various cuisines – Italian, Chinese and of course the customary fondue. We were fortunate to experience clear blue skies throughout our stay, meaning that Mont Blanc and other high Alps were visible from the CERN cafeteria. On the final day, the students were able to tour the United Nations building, visit the Red Cross Museum, view the city from the tower of the Cathédrale St. Pierre or just take in the city, before ‘EasyJetting' home. Dr S Bosworth Click on a photo to view a larger version in a new window.
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