The National Particle Physics Masterclass

Last Wednesday we organised our traditional annual masterclass (see web-page). Practically this means we invite 120 A-level students having chosen physics as one of their main subjects (and therefore hopefully interested) and talk about particle physics during an afternoon.

We had four lectures about antimatter (Patrick), Higgs searches (Gavin), neutrino oscillations (Yoshi) and solar neutrinos (Dave) and a discussion session where students could ask a lot of questions ranging from "Why do you like particle physics?" to "Can you explain Bell inequalities in 5 minutes?". If there's any question still unanswered don't hesitate to post it on this blog using the "Read/Add comments" link below.

The masterclass went quite smoothly, given that the air-conditioning decided to die during the morning, which forced us to reshuffle the order of the breaks a little. There's no real fun if there's not a little touch of improvisation in the organisation!

I had a first look at the feedback questionnaires. The students most liked the discussions and Dave's talk. We also had a lot of praise for the catering.

Among the suggestions for improvement of course the air conditioning was mentioned, as well as a need for more breaks (we'll take that into account for next year for sure!). Then we had a lot of of interesting but sometimes contradictory suggestions for "more" and "less theory", "more demonstrations" (yes, I agree, but that's difficult to organize) and "some derivations" (that's a tough one...). Many thanks to the students for all the useful feedback!

I would also like to thank all my colleagues who worked to make this happen: First Piera for all practical aspects. Paula and Ghislaine for the help with the catering. The already mentioned speakers of course, and everyone who joined the discussions. I can't possibly cite them all here!