During the May half term, 28 of our Y12 and Y13 physicists set course for CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. They were accompanied by Mr Adamson, Mr Pinder, Mrs McCole, Mr Day and Mr Randall, all in a quest to help discover the secrets of what matter truly is. Whilst unfortunately they did not make any ground-breaking discoveries towards the secrets of the universe, all students had an amazing time exploring the exhibits and workshops. Gabriel bravely volunteered to help demonstrate the separation of charges in plasma, in front of a live audience. A particular highlight was during the interactive exhibit on being an electron, when Ethan discovered he had become quantum entangled with Mr Day! Students even got the chance to visit the control room at the ATLAS detector and see their data scientists working hard to unpick the events of latest proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider, happening 100m below their feet in the 27km long ring. It was so inspiring to hear all of the excited conversations about possible future careers in physics that students were discussing after their visit. This was highlighted by Michael’s joy in wearing his CERN hard hat all the way home from Geneva. Our students were an absolute credit to Notre Dame in how they conducted themselves throughout the visit. We are looking forward to running this trip again in the years to come. Hopefully we can look forward to hearing about the exciting discoveries in particle physics future years, made by our own Notre Dame students!
