Hosted by OSOS , contributed by baneva on 21 May 2018
This project was developed as the Ist CMS CERN Master Class in Bulgaria for 69 high school students, at the of age 15 to 19 years, from 45 schools from all over the country. It has been jointly realized as a collaboration of CERN, the Faculty of Physics of the University of Sofia, the Institute of Nuclear research and Nullear ENERGY of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Foundation Open Science and the OSOS project. It aims at inspiring science education and increasing the interest of young people in natural sciences, promotion of collaboration between schools, encouraging teachers to sharing experience in teaching science and using new technologies in the classroom. The Ist CMS Masterclass took place on the 26th of March, 2018, at the computer halls of the Faculty of Physics.
Organization Preparatory phase - The There was a public announcement - invitation for the students to apply for participation, at the end of January 2018 on the online playform NAUKA, in the media and distributed to the school in the country through the regional subdivisions of the Ministry of Science and Education. The students have been invited to register and submit an essay in English describing their motivation for participation and a recommendation letter by a their science teacher. The most important issue in the selection procedure was the studnents interest in physics and in science, in general. There were 112 applications of motivated students and it was very difficult for the organizers (2 scientists from the Univerity and 2 scientists from the Institute) to make the selection. 69 students were selected. out of these 5 were more experienced on the bases of internship program already done at CERN and were invited to help the mentors during the measurements.
The day of the event - The students first listened to a lecture by an active scientist - expert in high energy physics on topics and methods of basic research on the fundaments of forces and matter. Then they had a lecture by an expert on CMS measurements on the methodology and what they have to do to perform the measurements themselves. After lunch they went to the computer halls were they worked in pairs (2 students on a laptop or computer) under the supervision of mentors to perform the task and obtain their own results. The mentors were young Bulgarian scientists with expertize on CMS experiment. The teachers were observing the work of their students. After collecting the results and a short discussion among themselves and with the mentors a video conference started (16‐17h CET). The reported their results and discussed with CERN scientists and with other participants from France, Serbia and Turkey, like in a real scientific collaboration.
All the students and the mentors received cerificates for participation in the CMS masterclass.