CERN 17

3 hours of lectures today going deeper into particle physics. I will never look at a proton the same way again. You 6th formers and some yr 11 will have heard of quarks. Well a proton is a complex combination of u d quarks, gluons and pairs of any other matter anti matter quarks. All interacting with each other. Very complex.

After a hard day, we are all off to the bowling alley now in our working groups. I will be working with 4 other teachers reviewing and preparing resources for the IPPOG, international particle physics outreach group. Should be fun.

The first of the site visits after a lecture on basic particle Physics by John Ellis, THE man here in theoretical Physics. Learnt lots to bring back, especially for year 13. Anyway, this is a view of the first accelerator at CERN, the Synchrocyclotron, built in 1957.

Small world, Mr Fairweather. He is also on this course from his school in Switzerland

A view of the CERN council chamber before the first lecture.

A quiet Sunday in Geneva before my course starts. Now back at CERN sat in the Sun. This is a picture of the Mt. Blanc range with a superconducting magnet assembly from the Large Hadron Collider in the foreground.