Year 13 Physics students visit CERN Centre in Switzerland

Year 13 Physics students visited the CERN Centre near Geneva in Switzerland, home of the world’s largest and most complex science equipment, including the famous Large Hadron Collider.  Our students toured the Centre, learning about how scientists probe the structure of the particles that make up everything around us.  

In a packed visit as well as touring CERN, the students also visited the Swiss Plasma Centre and The History of Science Museum, as well as having time on their own to explore the city of Geneva and the stunning Lake Geneva.  The students represented the School impeccably and displayed maturity in terms of following instructions and staying safe.

Miss Conlon who led the visit, along with Mr Berriman reflected on a fascinating three-day trip:

‘We arrived in Geneva on Thursday and after having lunch we visited the History of Science Museum in Parc de La Perle du Lac.  We walked around Lake Geneva, where we had a view of the beautiful Jet d’Eau and Pont du Mont Blanc with a background of clear blue skies.  After the Museum visit, we took the free yellow water taxi across Lake Geneva and walked back to our hostel for dinner. The students then had some free time to explore the City.

We were collected by coach on Friday morning to visit the Swiss Plasma Centre in Lausanne where the techniques used to create and maintain the conditions necessary for fusion to occur are studied.  We learnt that scientists explore the conditions in a controlled environment using a toroidally (doughnut) shaped machine called the ‘Tokamak’ and we viewed some of the instruments used to take measurements. We then returned to our hostel and allowed the students free time to have lunch, see the sites of Geneva and enjoy a cable car ride!  

On Saturday, we took the tram to CERN for our guided tour which included a visit to the Anti-Matter Factory where we were shown how they make ‘anti-hydrogen’. We then had time to visit Cern’s new Exhibition Centre and immerse ourselves in the interactive experiments on offer. We also took in a Science show called ‘Mysteries of Matter’, which demonstrated different states of matter and magnetism in a fun way.’