17 September 2024
Thanks to her prize-winning essay about the search for dark matter and dark energy, during the summer holiday, Sixth Former Anna participated in Liverpool University’s Particle School at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, Geneva. A packed five-days focused on particle physics involved lectures, tours, workshops and a group project, as Anna explains.
Anna M, Upper Sixth
I found the lecture on antimatter particularly interesting. Dr Danielle Hodgkinson, whose team’s research has recently been published, talked about how they are using the equipment at the ELENA facility at CERN to investigate how antimatter responds to gravity. She explained that the equipment has to use magnetic fields to contain the antimatter, because antimatter will annihilate when exposed to matter.
Later the same day, we had the opportunity to look around the ELENA facility. We also toured the tunnels surrounding the Compact Muon Collider, one of the four particle detectors that make up the Large Hadron Collider. This involved going 100m underground and getting as close to the detector as is safe, given the high levels of radiation. Later, we saw the building where the detector was built and a life size image of the detector (main picture), which helped us comprehend its massive size (15 metres in diameter and 21 metres long).
Our final group project involved us designing a muon-muon collider, on which we were given feedback from PhD students working on the LHCb (the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment). I contributed to the detector design and helped investigate the best metals to use for superconducting magnets.
During the evenings, we took part in activities such as swimming in Lake Geneva and a Particle School dinner, which gave us a great opportunity to chat with the PhD students and hear their thoughts about new developments at CERN. This was an absolutely incredible experience. I’m so grateful to everyone involved in the Liverpool@CERN Particle School for organising the trip and to the Woldingham’s Science Department for recommending I take part in the competition.
