Over the February half term, the sixth form physicists travelled to Geneva and enjoyed a fantastic trip to CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Find out more about the best experiences of the trip from Izzy and Linus, below.
Travelling 10km into France across the diameter of the LHC gave us an impressive sense of the scale of the engineering. Upon reaching the northern most point of the accelerator, we went 90m underground and saw the Compact Muon Solenoid – a 14,000 tonne detector. This is where they could discover extra dimensions, or particles that make up dark matter. We were fortunate enough to visit the ‘Antimatter factory’ and learnt about how they hope to determine the interaction between antimatter and gravity; in 2021 they could discover that it falls upwards! It was an unforgettable trip to the forefront of modern physics.
Izzy (upper sixth)
One of my favourite parts of the trip was creating a fully functioning cloud chamber where you could physically see particles interacting with the vapour inside the chamber. After all the chambers were created a five minute silence arose, signalling a universal mesmerisation as a result of the pure, observable Physics.
Linus (upper sixth)