This activity is part of the conference promoted by the International Particle Physics Dissemination Group (IPPOG)
March 28, 2022
Thirty high school students from 10 centers in Cantabria participated today in the seventeenth edition of the International MasterClasses in Particle Physics, organized by the Physics Institute of Cantabria and promoted by the International Particle Physics Dissemination Group (IPPOG), whose representative in Spain is Alberto Ruiz, researcher at IFCA.
The objective of the meeting, organized by ICA for more than 15 years in collaboration with the UC Faculty of Sciences, is to provide students the opportunity to become real researchers in particle physics for a day and bring them a little closer towards research in particle physics.
The activity began at 9:00 in the morning, when the students went to the assembly hall of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Cantabria. They were welcomed by the Vice-Rector for Research and Scientific Policy of the University of Cantabria, Luigi Dell'Olio, the IPPOG representative and IFCA researcher, Alberto Ruiz, and IFCA Vice-Director for Dissemination, Jónatan Piedra, who explained them what the basic research methods and theory in particle physics are, the Standard Model of Particle Physics and accelerators, thus providing useful prior knowledge for the development of subsequent exercise. IFCA researcher Pablo Martínez gave them basic keys to begin the practical part.
Data collection of the Z boson, the W boson and the Higgs boson
Students put the theory into practice in the computer rooms of the Faculty of Sciences and analyzed collisions between real protons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN with the support of IFCA staff working on this experiment. Thus, they have learned the details of the detector and have discovered how particles such as the Z boson, the W boson and, of course, the Higgs boson are observed by collecting real data.
The four LHC experiments. ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb, make their data available for this annual event. Here students have used the data from the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector, the collaboration in which IFCA actively participates through the Particles and Instrumentation Group.
In the afternoon, boys and girls visited the institute's laboratories and the IFCA computer room, which houses the Altamira supercomputer. At the end of the day, it was time to share the results obtained between all the participating groups with other countries; Lyon (France), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Geneva (Switzerland) and Aachen (Germany), through a moderated videoconference from CERN and supervised by Javier Brochero.
More than 13,000 students from 52 countries
Every year, more than 13,000 secondary school students from 52 countries come to one of the 215 universities or research centers that participate in the "International Masterclasses - Hands on Particle Physics". The objective of this international event is to unveil the mysteries of particle physics during one day. It allows them to have a first contact with the most cutting-edge science by working together with the personal researcher, resolving doubts and contributing new ideas.
