Polish high-school students find inspiration at CERN

Watch students and teachers from two schools in central Poland searching proton collisions from the LHC for signs of new particles

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In November 2012, four months after Polish high-school teacher Małgorzata Masłowska completed the High School Physics Teacher Programme at CERN, she returned to the laboratory with a group of students and teachers from two schools in central Poland: Mikołaj Kopernik high school in Kalisz and Kazimierz Wielki high school in Poznań. Documentary photographer and filmmaker Georgios Makkas captured their experiences at CERN in this Vimeo video.

As well as visiting the Low Energy Ion Ring and participating live in a Hangout with CERN, the students looked for signatures of fundamental particles in real proton-proton collision data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The activity was supported by CERN Education Group in the framework of the PATHWAY and Discover the COSMOS EU projects.

Poland joined CERN as a Member State in 1991. Polish high-energy-physics groups along with the Polish industry contributed significantly to building parts of all the LHC experiments, and more than 100 Polish engineers and technicians also participated in the commissioning of the LHC. Polish people continue to play active roles in the research and education activities at CERN today.

Masłowska is one of more than 500 physics teachers acting as CERN ambassadors across Poland - the second highest representation in CERN's Teacher Programmes after the United Kingdom, which has seen just fewer than 950 teachers attend since 1998. The laboratory's flagship travelling exhibition Accelerating Science will also be hosted in Warsaw later this year.