Day 10 Bubble, bubble.....

Dear All,

Today we had a couple more lectures on Particle Accelerators, Detectors and Cosmology.

They were all very interesting although i have to admit i was lost a couple of times as some of the things we were introduced to were very complex. Again, the complexity of particle accelerators are astounding and it is no wonder that it takes at least 5 -10 years to design and build!!! I am comforted to know though, that there is a big red button which they can press to stop everything if there are any problems..... it will be interesting to see how Hollywood interprets this for hte Dan Brown, 'Angels and Demons' movie;-)

I still have an opportunity to ask some questions so if there is anything you ish to know, this is your chance. In particular, if you want to know more about Dark Matter and Dark Energy then go for it!!!!

It is weird because before i arrived, i was pretty sceptical about the whole, Higgs Boson and Dark Matter concepts. But having heard some of the evidence for these things i am more willing to accept it. I think the thing which changed my mind most was when Frank Close, said that just because you cannot see something doesn't necessary mean it is not real. We can't see atoms, gravity or the static electrcity but we know they are all there. (I know these arguments can be used for other things but we will not diverge to those places!)

This afternoon we had our first Working Group meeting. I found it useful and it was goodto finally get started on some work which i will hopefully be able to use in my classroom. It is a bit daunting, especially as we have about a week to develop materials. But the fact that i am in a group means that i know there will be good colleagues to back me up.

For information, i chose to work on the Bubble Chamber section of the website. It would be great if people, (you know who you are Jedi!) could look at the website and give me some of their thoughts. Especially as i'm hoping you guys will be using it sometime after the holidays! ;-)) You can find it by doing the following: -

http://teachers.web.cern.ch/teachers/archiv/HST2005/bubble_chambers/BCwebsite/index.htm

Beofre i finish, i feel i should point out that Gron, (who is advising us for our Working Group) gave me a lift to the supermarket in France. This was very kind of him as he still had to prepare some materials for his lecture later this evening.

Thank you Gron!!!!