International Masterclasses is an annual event tratitionally held in February or March, which provides a unique opportunity for 15-19-year old students to discover particle physics. A total of approximately 10.000 high school students from 47 countries participate every year, effectively getting insight into topics and methods of basic research at the fundaments of matter and forces. Not only are they given a chance to get out of school without being prosecuted, but they also put their hands on an experiment themselves by performing measurements on real data from particle physics experiments at CERN. Almost 200 universities or research centres are involved in this project.
There are three participating institutes in the Czech Republic – the Institute of Physics at the Silesian University in Opava, the Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics at the Charles University in Prague and the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering at the Czech Technical University (FNSPE CTU) in Prague.
This year’s International Particle Physics Masterclasses at the FNSPE CTU took place on March 18 2016 at the faculty’s headquarters. The Czech part of the project is being organised in cooperation with the International Paticle Physics Outreach Group, Prague EPS Young Minds section and CERN. The students are given an unique opportunity to become a particle physicist for one day without needing any special knowledge.
In the morning, the students went through a series of instructive lectures given by scientists who actively work at CERN, whereas in the afternoon, an actual data analysis from two LHC experiments – ATLAS and ALICE – was carried out. While analysing the experimental data from ATLAS, the students were given a chance to (re)discover the (divine) Higgs boson. The results were forwarded to CERN. The highlight of the day was a live videoconference with CERN physicist and with other teams from several universities abroad. At the very end, the best team was proclaimed. During the day, organizers prepared lunch, refreshments, beverages and coffe for participating students.
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