CERN HST2019 - Day 1

After a bit of travel, I'm finally at CERN!  Getting dropped off by the tram next to the globe and ring of science and then seeing Route A EINSTEIN as a I made my way to check in at the CERN Hotel meant that the smile never left my face.


This has been an amazing start to program that really outlines so much that we have to look forward to over the next couple weeks.  The program coordinator, Jeff, is absolutely amazing!  He's so upbeat and energetic and makes it feel like our group is really special, even though we're probably the 50th group he's had this year.

Tomorrow we get a bit of an introduction to particle physics and our first site visit, the Synchrocyclotron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CERN HST2019 - Day 2

Image
This morning was the rush to get our official CERN passes!  Although I wasn't supposed to smile for the photo, I just couldn't help myself!  Jeff showed us how many participants there have been from each country from 1998-2018 and it was amazing to see that there have been over 12000 teachers go through the teacher programmes at CERN with 1351 from the UK, 1039 from Germany, just 116 from the United States, and only 14 from Canada (making myself just the 15th Canadian high school teacher in the programme's 21-year history!) This afternoon we had our first talk from one of the researchers here at CERN, Claire Lee of the Brookhaven National Laboratory.  She did a wonderful presentation on introductory particle physics and did a phenomenal job of answering our group's questions!  After that, we followed things up with our first site visit of the program, the Synchrocyclotron!  There was an awesome digital presentation that told the story of CERN's formation and...
Read more

TRIUMF Day 4 - ARIEL and CMMS

Image
 Today was focused on a number of Science Week sessions on ARIEL with the highlight being a tour of the Centre for Molecular and Materials Science (CMMS) with Iain McKenzie. This morning's talks started with a look at what they are looking at for early science investigations at ARIEL, including further research into X-ray FLASH radiotherapy. FLASH radiotherapy is a fascinating potential for curing cancer. Researchers this week have been talking about how it was first done decades ago, had some promising results, but everyone figured it was too good to be true and got shelved in favour of other courses of treatment. Now, FLASH is being seen as the next big thing in cancer treatment, but there is still lots of hesitancy as researchers are still trying to figure out the exact mechanism by which it works. Until they get it all figured out, there is a lot of cautious optimism and it's a high priority for further research. After this session, I met up with Iain and he took me over to...
Read more

Reflections of hope at the halfway point...

Image
Today is the only day off in the programme and after a crazy week I am ready to take some time to recharge for the second half of the programme next week.  Though it's been busy and sometimes it feels like there hasn't been a moment to sit down, this has truly been the best professional experience of my life! Being here, surrounded by other physics teachers and physicists from around the world has been an incredible experience.  Hearing about the challenges we all face in our classrooms, which are far more similar than I ever realized, and how we combat them has given me a lot of perspective.  I've learned so much from those around me, from the movement towards Modeling Instruction in the United States, to constant curriculum updates to keep content modern in countries like Spain and many others, to the strong collaborative efforts of schools and universities to bring physics education to students and the public in my neighbouring province of Ontario, and all of the str...
Read more