Students from years 10 to 13 visited the world’s biggest scientific experiment last week – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. It is easy to be amazed by the LHC, it is cooled to a lower temperature than outer space and accelerates protons to almost the speed of light in 27 km of tunnels 100m under the Earth, and they invented the world wide web to handle the data!
However, It is not easy to understand what the LHC does or how it works, and we were really impressed by our Park Lane students, they studied before the visit and made us proud by answering questions correctly and asking intelligent questions of the researchers. They were also responsible and trustworthy and a pleasure to be with.
As well as activities at CERN, including building their own particle detectors, we did lots of other exciting and educational activities. These included visiting the underground machinery of the Jet d’Eau (a 140m tall water fountain), sailing, windsurfing and kayaking on Lac Leman, an escape room, bowling… The weather mostly cooperated, and students threw themselves wholeheartedly into all the sporting activities, just as they had with the science.
Thanks to Miss Kin, Mr Toci for helping me on the trip and Miss Zíková for helping me to organise it, as well as to all the students.
Hugo Gibson
Teacher of Science