CERN HST2019 - Day 3

Another amazing day at HST2019!  Today we had a series of lectures starting with a wonderful talk from Dr. Simone Gilardoni this morning on how particle accelerators work.  It was truly fascinating, but I have to admit that some parts were a little over my head!  He is truly a gifted speaker and took the time to answer all of our group's questions.

In the afternoon we had a talk about errors and uncertainty from André David of the CMS experiment.  This has to be one of my favourite lectures so far and really emphasized why it's so important to teach the differences between accuracy and precision in our classrooms.   He was entertaining and witty and had one of the best ways of explaining concepts that I have ever seen!  There is so much from his presentation that I plan on immediately using in my classroom in September!  We then had our first Q&A session with Kristof Schmieden from ATLAS.  There was wonderful discussion and I found the questions from our group to be tremendously insightful with Kristof's answers helping to clarify my understanding of particle physics.

We wrapped up the day with our first social event of the program, bowling and pizza!  This was an opportunity to work together with our focus groups and unwind a bit after a long day of sitting.  I did my best to represent Canada's bowling skills!  Haha!  On our trip I had some amazing conversations with my colleagues in the program and everything I learn from them and our presenters just inspires me to do even better when the new school year starts in September.

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