Despite the early start, a group of 40 eager Upper Sixth physicists met up at Solefields Car Park for the journey to Switzerland.
During the trip, there were visits to the United Nations Headquarters, a giant acoustic mirror, the Jet d’Eau and the Old Town, but the highlight of the trip had to be the two days at CERN.
We were treated to a workshop where we could make a cloud chamber, allowing us to monitor and analyse the background radiation speeding through the room, and also embarked on a tour of the CERN facility. This year, we stopped off at the Central Control Centre and the neutrino platform, where we learned about the experiment being undertaken and its links with a similar underground experiment at Fermilab in the USA. Between these activities, we explored CERN’s visitor exhibits and had the chance to practice lowering a model particle detector into an underground chasm and control the synchrotron’s kickers to accelerate particles.
After good company, good learning, and far too much fondue, we returned to the beginning of the Michaelmas term, a little wiser about the workings of CERN, Particle Physics and Feynmann diagrams.
