Outreach

 

 

The Big Bang Fair in Manchester

Graeme Burt and Adrian Hannah show some interested schoolchildren how an accelerator works.

The Cockcroft Institute staff have been demonstrating to the public how particle accelerators work at ‘The Big Bang’ science fair in Manchester on the 11th-13th March this year. The Cockcroft Institute staff created and manned a stand called ‘Particle Accelerators’ which demonstrated the major components of accelerators: electric and magnetic fields, charged particle beams and vacuum systems. The small 3x5 metre stand was packed full of interesting demonstrations such as steering electron beams using electric and magnetic fields in a fine beam tube, a magnetic accelerator which accelerates an iron rod to 60 mph in only 5 centimetres, and a huge array of vacuum experiments in a bell jar, including demonstrating the triple point of water, where water freezes and boils at the same time. Also the stand included a pair of the EMMA quadropole magnets and a 3D walkthrough of the ALICE accelerator at Daresbury Laboratories. There was a constant stream of interest from schoolchildren, teachers and the general public at the stand who were all eager to use some of the hands-on exhibits on display.
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Particle Physics Master Class

A-level students visited Daresbury Laboratory on 15-16 March to take part in the annual Particle Physics Masterclass. Students from schools around the area, were given talks and practical demonstrations and challenges related to particle accelerators, including a hands-on experiment to measure energy in ALICE, an R&D prototype for the next generation of accelerator based light sources.

Dr Lee Jones, an accelerator physicist in ASTeC, said “Some of the concepts of physics can be difficult for teachers to deliver and for students to grasp, but it’s also one of the most exciting subjects to teach. There’s worldwide excitement about the discoveries that may be made at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for example, which may challenge what we think we know about the nature of matter. Hopefully the students we inspire through the Masterclasses can rise to meet these challenges, and who can tell where that journey might lead them?” …more photographs »