12th International Particle Physics Masterclasses 2016
International Masterclasses in particle physics give secondary school students the opportunity to discover the world of quarks and leptons for themselves, by performing measurements on real data from CERN, to meet active particle physics researchers, and to link up with like-minded students from other countries. Each year about 10 000 high school students in 37 countries, including South Africa, come to one of about 160 nearby universities or research centres for one day to attend these International Master classes. Lectures given by active scientists provide insight in topics and methods of basic research at the fundamental level of matter and forces, enabling the students to analyse real data from particle physics experiments by themselves. At the end of each day, similar to international research collaboration, the participants join in a video conference for discussion and combination of their results.
International Masterclasses are led by Technical University Dresden and QuarkNet, in close cooperation with the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG). IPPOG is an independent group of outreach representatives from countries involved in the research at leading research laboratories worldwide. QuarkNet is a United States teacher professional development program supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Since 2013 the outreach programs of both iThemba LABS and UCT are also involved in this program.
On 18 March 2016 iThemba LABS hosted the 12th International Masterclass event. Fourty five learners from different schools around the City of Cape Town participated in this event. The event was organized by the Department of Nuclear physics (Dr Z Buthelezi) who was assisted by postgraduate students: Ms. Nomvelo Dindikazi (MSc, UZULU) and Messrs., KJ Senosi (3rd year PhD, UCT) and A Whitehead (2nd year PhD, UCT) working on the ALICE related topics. The organization was done in collaboration with in collaboration with the outreach team of iThemba LABS. The program was opened by the deputy director, Dr Rudzani Nemutudi (iThemba LABS). It included introductory lectures on the fundamentals of particle physics, particle accelerators and detectors, with an emphasis on the ALICE detector. The lectures were given by Dr Tom Dietel (UCT) while the practical (hands-on) session, i. e. the measurement: “Looking for strange particles in ALICE“, was led by Mr Senosi, the help of facilitators Mr Andile Whitehead, Ms Nomvelo Dindikazi as well as Drs Zinhle Buthelezi and Tom Dietel.
The programme was designed in such a way that each learner had a unique opportunity to interact and work with a leaner from another school, engaging with the local physicists and get the opportunity to interact with their peers from 3 international high schools: Nantes (France), São Paolo (Brazil) and Prague (Czech Republic) via a teleconferencing session at the end of the day.
Participants at 12th International ALICE Masterclass held at iThemba LABS on 18 March 2016
Participating countries in the measurement “Looking for strange particles ALICE” during teleconference session on 18 March 2016.