High School Students analyse for the first time real LHC data at McGill

International Hands on Particle Physics Masterclasses bring up young investigators.

On March 17th McGill will open their doors and invite high school students to become particle physicists for one day. This year more than 8000 students will participate in the International Hands on Particle Physics Masterclasses and analyse real data from the new and powerful particle accelerator at CERN, Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The student groups from across Quebec will discuss the results of their measurements with groups from Brookhaven, New York, Gainesville, Florida and Tallahassee, Florida via videoconference, moderated by researchers at CERN and Fermilab. The goal is to make particle physics more accessible to the public.
Students will work on the first real data from the LHC, collected just a few months ago. Three experiments - ATLAS, CMS, and ALICE - have made data available for educational use within the program. Students can for example rediscover the Z boson or the structure of the proton, reconstruct "strange particles", or search for the elusive Higgs boson in particle tracks.
The basic idea of the annual program is to let students work as much as possible like real scientists. In an authentic environment they are allowed to gain insight into the international organisation of modern research; at the same time, they learn about the world of subatomic particles through easy-to-understand presentations by physicists who are themselves involved in particle physics research. Participants will examine the products of collisions of elementary particles traveling at close to the speed of light, racing through a 27-kilometer-circumference accelerator. Via videoconference, they will compare and discuss their findings with students in other countries - just like actual particle physicists do in international collaborations.
International Hands on Particle Physics Masterclasses take place under the central coordination of Michael Stoebe, McGill University, in close cooperation with the experimental high-energy physics group and the Physics Department at McGill and with the support of Kenneth Cecire, coordinator of the QuarkNet Masterclass.

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