CERN’s 2016 Beamline for Schools competition starts on 17 November

Spread the word: CERN is offering high-school students from around the world the chance to create and perform a scientific experiment on a CERN accelerator beamline. What better way to learn about physics? 

(Video: Noemi Caraban​/CERN )

Now in its third year, the Beamline for Schools competition is open to teams of at least five students aged 16 and with at least one adult supervisor or “coach”.

Students can find out about the beamline and facilities via http://cern.ch/bl4s, then think of a simple, creative experiment. They can register their team from 17 November to start receiving e-mail updates. They then submit a written proposal and a short video by 31 March 2016. The winners will be announced in June and will come to CERN, preferably in September 2016. Previous winners have tested webcams and classroom-grown crystals at the beamline, others have studied how particles decay and investigated high-energy gamma rays.

All participants will receive a certificate. Shortlisted teams will win a BL4S t-shirt for each team member and a cosmic-ray detector for the school, and some will be offered the chance to visit a physics laboratory near them. For the winning team(s), between five and nine members and up to two adult coaches per team will be invited to CERN, all expenses paid, for 10 days to carry out their experiments at the beamline.

Registration opens 17 November: http://cern.ch/bl4s

The project is funded in part by the Alcoa Foundation; additional contributions are received from National Instruments.