CERN Adventure
Let’s Work Together At CERN!
Hello! I’m Marten Stone, local weasel and well, I made a mistake.
I’ll explain what happened, but first things first. Welcome to CERN, the world’s largest laboratory!
Don’t know about CERN? Watch this quick video (don’t worry, I won’t move while you’re watching it), and then I’ll explain how you can help me.
Okay great. You’re back.
You’re like me–you’re curious and want to know more about CERN and how it works. I did too, so I snuck inside the electrical wiring at CERN, and I chewed a wire I probably shouldn’t have, and oops, the loss of power shut down the experiments.
Twice. I know, I know.
I need your help to get the Large Hadron Collider Beam up and running again, so Scientists can use its data to help us understand how our Universe was formed! If none of that makes sense, not to worry! I’m here to help you as you help me.
YES–this sounds like a lot, but I know you can do it! Let’s go!
A Little Back History…to the Big Bang
Now, my weasel ancestors in this area can be traced back to the the Würm glaciation 12,000 to 120,000 years ago, also known as The Ice Age. But did you know the Universe is actually much, much older?
13,800,000,000 years ago. Ish. It’s hard to be super exact, but that’s so long ago…nothing existed. Nothing. But then there was a Big Bang and the Universe formed (eventually) into what we have right now.
This really matters! You see, that’s a joke. Because the Universe and everything in it is made of matter, which is the name for the stuff you can see (and other stuff that you can’t see, like oxygen in the air).
You and me to the earth and moon, the sun and the galaxies–all made out of matter. But how did matter and our Universe form? How did we get here?
To understand what’s happening now, we have to go back to the beginning. The very beginning, the beginning of everything, starting with the Big Bang!
Marten here: I know it can be really hard to visualize how small different particles are. Watch this video! You’ll see just how small things get into this Voyage into the World of Atoms!
Who Are the People Who Work at CERN?
Okay, back to my problem. I chewed through important wires and I took the whole LHC offline! There are so many people at CERN and I’ll need their help in helping to get the LHC back online and working.
Since you are going to help me get the LHC back online, you’ll need to know what people at CERN do. You’ll see why I wanted to sneak inside–the people there are so cool! They are are all smart, passionate about science, and they work together so well!
Learn about each job to help you solve this problem with me! You’ll need to ask questions like a Scientist, build like an Engineer, and create connections like an Information Technologist!
Let’s Get the LHC Running Again!
Okay, you’re doing great. You’ve learned about CERN, what happens there, and the people who make it happen.
It’s time for you to help get the LHC back online by rebuilding the LHC and making sure it’s connected correctly.
Acting like Engineers, Scientists, and Information Technologists, you’ll work in small teams. To get the beam online, you’ll put together a model of the LHC with its main components in the right places. Once you do that, you’ll test the your model to make sure it’s built correctly. Once you do that, the Beam will be back on!
Follow the instructions given by your teacher.
Check those connections carefully–a mistake can keep CERN Offline!
When you think you have put the LHC together correctly, check your work using the Drag and Drop interactive below. Click “Time to Turn it On!” to see if it works!
You Did It!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
You help me, and CERN, in getting the beam back online. Now the research can continue!
Don’t worry, I learned my lesson. For now.
Those wires just look so yummy!
Now that the Beam has been restored in the LHC, let’s now see how CERN learns from it!
At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), protons collide in the centre of gigantic detectors. Then hundreds of new particles, the tiniest bits of matter (what we are made of, as well as everything around us: air, water, rocks etc.), are produced and fly in all directions away from the collision point.
When particles collide inside a Detector, the transformation of particles create different tracks. The patterns of those tracks can tell scientists what kind of particles are there, and this is how CERN learn about how matter forms.
On the CERN Connect the Dots activity, you can color in six different collisions with different types of particle tracks. By connecting these dots, we can see the tracks (path) of the particles. These tracks are analysed by the physicists to understand what happened in the collision.
Study each of the six simplified collisions. You may find the famous Higgs boson!
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