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A model of CERN's CMS detector built with Lego parts


16 de enero 2020


About a hundred high school students from Santander, San Vicente de la Barquera, Valladolid and Elche, met this morning to conclude the assembly of the model of CMS detector with Lego parts in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Cantabria (UC).

The project, organized and coordinated by the Instituto de Física de Cantabria (IFCA), is called 'Medium Hadron Collider'.

IFCA presented this activity as a proposal to the second edition of the Fundación General CSIC (FGCSIC) convocation: 'Cuenta la Ciencia' ('Tell Science') with the aim of bringing particle physics and technological aspects developed at CERN, closer to secondary school and high school students at seven educational centres, by building a model of the CMS detector (Compact Muon Solenoid) with Lego pieces.

The vice-chancellor of Doctorate and International Relations at Universidad de Cantabria (UC), Alberto Ruiz, together with the dean of Faculty of Sciences, Francisco Matorras, and the deputy director of the IFCA, Rocío Vilar, presented this conference in which, students and teachers from Santander (IES José María de Pereda, IES Cantabria, IES Torres Quevedo and Miguel Bravo school) and San Vicente de la Barquera (IES José Hierro) participated, plus groups from Instituto Politécnico 'Cristo Rey' of Valladolid and Colegio 'María Auxiliadora' of Elche, who joined the group by videoconference.

Throughout the morning and with presence of Alicia Calderón, researcher at IFCA and Celso Martínez, head of the project, total assembly of the model was completed. Likewise, different teams shared their work, explaining their contribution, how they faced the construction and what difficulties they had. In short, participants have put as much effort as toy pieces to understand how a particle detector works.

After the event, students went to Instituto de Física of Cantabria, to see live some of particles they have studied, thanks to a fog chamber and a model of a particle accelerator like the one at CERN. After a difficult deliberation, jury decided that the team from the IES Cantabria (Santander) deserved to win the prize, so they will take complete model made by all the education centres. IES José Hierro (San Vicente de la Barquera) was second classified and IES José María de Pereda also received a special mention for being the youngest participating group.

The name of mention project: 'Medium Hadron Collider', refers to CERN's LHC, the largest laboratory built by mankind, which is located in Geneva (Switzerland) about 100 meters underground. It accelerates particles to very high energies so that collide and we can discover what matter is made of. One of detectors used to observe the particles that arise from these impacts is the CMS, in which IFCA has been working for years to make such important discoveries as the Higgs boson.



  • Joint Centre with the combined effort of Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and University of Cantabria (UC)

    Instituto de Física de Cantabria
    Edificio Juan Jordá
    Avenida de los Castros, s/n
    E-39005 Santander
    Cantabria, Spain

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