CERN's Beam Line for Schools Competition

CERN is offering high-school students from around the world the chance to create and perform a scientific experiment on a CERN accelerator beamline.
What better way to learn about physics? 

CERN is famous for the discovery of the Higgs boson and the invention of the World Wide Web, but there is much more to the laboratory than that. A large part of CERN’s research and development is carried out at so-called fixed-target beamlines. These projects range from investigating the inner workings of protons to probing the mysteries of antimatter. In this framework, CERN makes a fully equipped beamline available for schools, with beam-time being allocated to two winning teams via scientific Competition, just as it is allocated for all CERN experiments. The Competition is open to high-school students of 16 and older, in teams of at least five students, up to nine of who would – if their team wins – come to CERN to run their experiment. Teams may be composed of students from a single school, or from a number of schools working together. Proposals will be pre-selected by a committee of CERN scientists, with the short list being sent on to the SPS and PS experiments Committee (SPSC), the committee that validates all proposals for experiments at the laboratory’s SPS and PS accelerators. To enter, student teams should study the information about the beamline and experimental facilities, and tell us why they think they should win the chance to carry out experiments at the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. 

Each team’s entry must be submitted by an adult on behalf of the team. The teams may ask their teachers or professional physicists (e.g. from a nearby University) to propose a subject to them or to discuss with them the feasibility of an idea they had themselves. CERN and the physics community will also offer support to teams preparing entries. The main objective of the competition is that the students increase their knowledge about physics while working together on their proposal.

CERN will offer the winning teams a fully equipped beamline and experimental programme and is not necessarily expecting to receive a fully developed experimental proposal. However, there is no limit for your own ideas and suggestions of alternative experiments! 

In this community of practice, guidelines on how to prepare one's school for the BeamLine Competition in a creative fashion as well as useful resources will be presented. Participants will be able to exchange practices and ideas. For further information, please visit the Beam Line 4 Schools official website: http://beamline-for-schools.web.cern.ch/