ATLAS e-News
23 February 2011
Norwegian Teachers Programme
11 December 2007
Ole Rohne shows the Norwegian teachers around
"It's amazing that you have to build something so huge to measure such extremely small things" says Tom Christiansen from Telemark in Norway, after visiting the ATLAS cavern. His sentiment about the size of the ATLAS detector was shared by the thirty-one other physics teachers who, together with Tom, attended the first Norwegian Teacher Programme run at CERN, in November 2007.
Going down into the ATLAS pit is one of the highlights of the teachers programme, and it has been very popular with teachers in each of the 21 different sessions run this year.
Steinar Stapnes, coordinator of the Norwegian programme, contacted fellow Norwegians at CERN and encouraged them to give lectures, help with hands-on activities and accompany the teachers on several site visits during the five-day programme.
Throughout the week, the Norwegian teachers became more familiar with particle physics and cosmology, the intricacies of particle accelerators and detectors, and other front-end science activities at CERN.
Steinar himself gave a lecture on detectors, and also accompanied the teachers on their visit to the ATLAS cavern. So did Ole Rohne, another Norwegian physicist working on the inner detector. Ole also guided the teachers through hands-on activities. He thinks doing physics experiments is very useful to help the teachers - and ultimately students - to realise that "physics is not just mathematical formulae, but involves many things you can do in the lab."
Steinar thinks the programme also helps teachers gain some tools they can use later on to engage their students not only in physics, but in science in general. "I think the understanding they get here about what is being done at the forefront of science will help them motivate their students back in the classroom," he says.
The ATLAS deputy spokesperson was himself lured into CERN by an encouraging teacher. "At high school, I had a maths and physics teacher whose brother was a theoretical physicist at the University of Oslo, working at CERN. Because of this, the teacher told us about CERN," Steinar says. "That was an important motivation for me."
Collaborative spirit
Mick Storr, coordinator of teacher programmes in CERN's Education group, says that many people have contributed to the National Teacher Programmes, which have been specifically designed to overcome the English language barrier. By the end of this year, more than 700 teachers will have attended sessions, delivered in eleven different languages.
All of them will have visited and been inspired by the ATLAS experiment. Organising and delivering the sessions requires the collaboration of many people. "The programme would not work without the help of the many individuals in the scientific community who have been happy to invest their time and effort to support teachers from their country," says Mick.
As Steinar realised when he asked Norwegian scientists for help, finding collaborators at CERN is not difficult because people are so willing to share their knowledge. Being a small community the CERN based Norwegian scientists are used to work together to support visitors from their northern homecountry.
At the end of the week, the programme was rated a success by all parties involved. Tom Christiansen sums up the view of the visitors: "The overall picture that the programme has given to us is fantastic," he says. "The scientists were quite clear that when they were addressing us as the audience, they were in fact addressing our students."
The thirty-six teachers are now back in Norway equipped with lots of ideas for physics experiments, clear explanations for complex science issues, and educational material about ATLAS and other experiments at CERN.
These tools will help the programme achieve its goals: "We want the teachers to be ambassadors for science, physics, particle physics and CERN," Mick Storr says. We want them to pass on the message to their students that science is alive."
ATLAS physicists get something in return too. When these teachers and other visitors come to see what is being done in ATLAS, it gives physicists an opportunity to look at their work with fresh eyes. Indeed, trying to explain to a layperson why the ATLAS detector is so big, is no small feat!
