1 minute read
Physics Professors Guide Utah Students to Win 2019 CERN Beamline Competition
Next Article
The 2019 CERN Beamline for Schools winners: (from left) The team from West High School in Salt Lake City (Image: Kara Budge) and the team from the Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen, Netherlands (Image: Martin Mug).
Two teams of high-school students, one from West High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, and one from the Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen, Netherlands, have won the 2019 Beamline for Schools competition (BL4S). In October, these teams were invited to the DESY research center in Hamburg, Germany, to carry out their proposed experiments together with scientists from CERN and DESY.
Professor Charlie Jui and associate professor Pearl Sandick advised the students from West on their proposal for an experiment that uses beamline. Beamlines deliver a stream of subatomic particles to any given set-up, making it possible to study a broad variety of properties and processes in various scientific disciplines. Beamlines are operated at laboratories such as CERN and DESY.
“We’re really proud of our West students,” said Jui. “They worked hard and it shows in the recognition they’ve received. I’m really stoked about their win!” This year, 178 teams from 49 countries submitted proposals to the competition.
The proposal from the “DESY Chain” team from West High focuses on the properties of scintillators. These are materials used for particle detection. The students aim to study the performance of these scintillators and compare their sensitivity to electrons and positrons, which may lead to more efficient particle detectors for a wide range of applications.
You can see the work of the West students in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=sdexfXt2o30.
“I’m so excited by the prospect of working at DESY— it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m proud to be a part of the first USA team to win the BL4S competition, especially because it provides access to equipment and systems I would otherwise never have dreamt of even seeing,” said August Muller from the “DESY Chain” team.
