SPbU invited school students to work at the Large Hadron Collider

Students of three Russian schools met at St Petersburg University to discover the recent achievements of the fundamental science in the field of high energy physics and related cutting-edge information technologies. Employees of the SPbU Laboratory of Super High Energy Physics organised an excursion to the world of "strange particles" for the guests of the University. Participants of the ALICE Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider, Grigory Feofilov, Vladimir Kovalenko and Igor Altsybeev, lectured the high school students on "Introduction to Particle Physics: Theory and Experiment", "Searching for Strange Particles During the ALICE Experiment" and held a master class on how to work with real data obtained at the ALICE set-up, the world's largest device for studying quark–gluon plasma (the matter of the early Universe).

For school students it is a very interesting experience. They have an opportunity to listen to lectures first, and then to conduct an independent research, get certain findings and discuss them with their peers during an international teleconference. Moreover, for the children it is also a unique work experience with big data obtained in the course of the largest experiment in the world.

Grigory Feofilov, Head of the SPbU Laboratory of Super High Energy Physics

SPbU has been involved in the ALICE experiment for 25 years already, from the period of its concept development, R&D, start-up and up to the physical data retrieval and analysis. "Throughout the years our laboratory has been constantly working with both schoolchildren and teachers of physics at schools. For this purpose, we have used the master class developed by our colleagues at CERN," Grigory Feofilov notes. "In the beginning, we launched a concise version of it, but in the last two years it has been held in its full international format. Access to the real data of the Large Hadron Collider has been provided by one of the leading Russian GRID specialists Andrey Zarochentsev, an SPbU employee and also a participant of the ALICE Collaboration."

Some high school students have already communicated with SPbU scientists. For instance, Nikita Belyakov, a student of Gymnasium No 625, Moscow, has visited the master class for the second time.

Masterclasses land in Russia

"I like physics in general, yet nuclear physics is most complicated for me. Quantum physics is a new field with so many mysteries to unveil. It is this science that tells us about our origin, about the origin of the whole universe. I want to understand that. Our St Petersburg meetings allow us to better understand the new information, to learn how to perceive it easier. And the master classes held at St Petersburg University give us an opportunity to communicate with scientists who live in science and help us decide for ourselves whether we are able to reach personal fulfilment in this field in the future."

From the Russian part, students of the SPbU Academic Gymnasium named after D. K. Faddeev, Lyceum No 30 and Moscow Gymnasium No 625 took part in the project. The schoolchildren presented the results of their independent work — their own small scientific study of experimental data — at the international teleconference held in English. The experiment and its discussion were simultaneously conducted at several universities around the world.

I'm interested in physics. I participated in online scientific workshops organised by the laboratory of St Petersburg University and I wanted to attend such workshops in person, to meet the scientists and talk to them in an informal setting. It is here that I got answers to human questions, not just to physics-related ones, for example, how the scientists themselves have come to what they are doing now. During this master class I have discovered a lot of new things in the field of nuclear physics, learned how particles are accelerated, what they are doing at CERN, got an idea about the current physics issues. For me the main thing is that I have realised that I am really interested in this field, and perhaps I can also contribute to science if I get involved into it myself.

Artem Krasnov, a student of the Moscow Gymnasium No 625

"The idea of ​​this master class is not just that school students are working with new data," explained Grigory Feofilov. "They also work in an international team comprising three to seven schools belonging to different countries that can participate in the project simultaneously. Today, the master class was attended by schoolchildren from Mexico, Greece and Russia. The students are interested, they are eager to ask questions, understand complex matters, get their first experience of international communication."

Master classes aimed at discovering strange particles during the ALICE experiment have been held at St Petersburg University for several years. In 2017, the University for the first time implemented the full-fledged eight-hour international master class format. As of today, the venue organised at St Petersburg University for conducting international master classes using the Large Hadron Collider data is the only one of this kind in the Russian Federation. The master classes are organised by Dresden University of Technology, Germany, under the auspices of the European Organization for Nuclear Research located in Geneva, Switzerland.