The Education and Outreach Project of ATLAS - A New Participant inPhysics Education
The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has a substantial collaborative Education and Outreach project. This article describes its activities and how it promotes physics to students around the world. With the extraordinary possibility to make groundbreaking discoveries, the ATLAS Experiment [1] at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN can play an important role in promoting contemporary physics at school. For many years ATLAS has had a substantial collaborative Education and Outreach (E&O) project in which physicists from various parts of the world take part. When the experiment begins in 2007, students from around the world will be analyzing data using cutting-edge technology. The unprecedented collision energies of the Large Hadron Collider allow ATLAS to decode the 'events' that unfold after the head-on collisions of protons (Fig. 1). The scientific results from these events will reveal much about the basic nature of matter, energy, space, and time. Students and others will be excited as they try to find events that may be signs for dark matter, extra dimensions of space, mini-black holes, string theory, and other fundamental discoveries. Science education and outreach and the promotion of awareness and appreciation of physics research have become important tasks for the research community and should be recognized as a natural and logical part of science research and as an important link between research and society. To be successful these activities have to be done in a systematic and professional way. Leading scientists together with multimedia experts can form a powerful team with teachers and educators in disseminating physics information to school and universities. The ATLAS collaboration has fully recognized the importance of education and outreach. The ATLAS E&O project can be a model for today's large science experiments in promoting science at schools and universities.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Director, Office of Science; National ScienceFoundation
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC02-05CH11231; NSF:PHY-0070972
- OSTI ID:
- 927813
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-60121; PHEDA7; R&D Project: PDGOPS; BnR: KA1401040; TRN: US0804727
- Journal Information:
- Physics Education, Vol. 41; Related Information: Journal Publication Date: 2006; ISSN 0031-9120
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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