CERN physicists don't wear white coats (at least not very often); they don't all wear glasses and they don't concoct dangerous potions. They are often even women. These are some of the discoveries made by children from local schools taking part in the "Draw me a physicist" project.
Franck Martin, an ATLAS physicist, answers questions from children from the Satigny-Village school.
20 school-classes from the Swiss communes of Meyrin, Satigny and Vernier and from the Pays de Gex in France have been taking part in this project, which involved the children making an initial drawing and writing a "dictionary-style" definition of a physicist in their classrooms, and then visiting CERN during the week of March 15th. The Swiss children were also treated to a show put on by the Physicscope group. During their visit to CERN they were able to see the laboratories and experiments for real and get an idea of what a physicist's job involves by interviewing a real male and femal physicist in the flesh. After these first tentative steps into the world of fundamental physics, the children will be able to complete the next stage in their project, which is to make a new drawing and write a new dictionary-definition of a physicist (male or female). The hope is that their trip to CERN will have altered their original, stereotype perception of scientists!
