YEAR 10 STUDENTS ATTEND LONDON PARTICLE PHYSICS SUMMER SCHOOL.

Every year, St. Paul’s School in central London holds a three day summer school for students with an interest in particle physics. It is a prestigious event with only 27 places available nationally. The selection process involves writing a short essay describing the student’s interest in particle physics, and how they feel they would benefit from attending the course. This year three Year 10 students from Richmond School successfully applied for the course – Matty Partridge, Guy Feakins and Jake Gault.

The three days consisted of a series of lectures and practical workshops, focusing on different aspects of particle physics. Particle physics is a complex branch of the science that is only touched on during GCSE, so the academic demand of the summer school was quite a way out of the students’ comfort zone! Listening to them talk about the lectures and workshops, however, it is very clear that they enjoyed this challenge immensely, and were very much up to demand of the content.

Some of the topics covered during the course were the origins of particle physics and particle accelerators, the behaviour of electrons in magnetic fields, quantum physics, the recently discovered Higgs boson, and a variety of other particles including photons, Z-bosons and quarks. These concepts are notoriously difficult to understand, let alone explain and the three students did a brilliant job explaining them to me!

While talking about particular high points of the course, Matty said: “You’d always heard about these particles smaller than atoms, but we’d never really learnt about them. Then when you’re introduced to a completely theoretical world that you have no concept of, it builds a brilliant fascination about a hidden micro-world – atoms are made of something else – wow, that’s incredible!”

All three students participated in the summer school with great enthusiasm and teamwork, and it certainly sounds like they gained a great deal from the experience. We wish them all the best with their studies in Year 11 – it sounds like there are very likely to be three recruits for A Level physics in a couple of year’s time!

Thank you to Mrs. Harrison for finding out about the summer school and encouraging the students to apply.