Inspiring Science Education

On the 24th of January, 2014, Professor Christine Kourkoumelis, Stylianos Vourakis and Nikos Tsirintanis visited the town of Chalkida where the first HYPATIA Masterclass took place at the premises of the 2nd Lyceum of the town. About 30 students from four different schools of the wider region participated. The students came to the school with their teachers and had the chance to perform hands-on exercises processing data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN. They were first introduced to the physics of the ATLAS experiment by Professor Christine Kourkoumelis. A live connection with the Control Center of the ATLAS experiment gave them the chance to get acquainted with the instrumentation used in the experiment and ask questions to the scientists at CERN. Finally, a detailed introduction to the HYPATIA software was provided by Stelios Vourakis, after which the hands-on exercise -carried out with the help of Nikos Tsirintanis- for the rediscovery of the Z boson and the Higgs boson took place.

On the 19th of February a second Masterclass took place at the 1st Lyceum of Chalkida. About 30 students from the rest of schools of the Chalkida region (those who did not have the chance to participate in the first event) participated. The students came to the school with their teachers and had the chance to perform hands-on exercises processing data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN. They were first introduced to the physics of the ATLAS experiment by Professor Christine Kourkoumelis. Later, a detailed introduction to the new HYPATIA app application was provided by George Vasileiadis, after which the hands-on exercise -carried out with the additional help of Stelios Vourakis - for the rediscovery of the Z boson and the Higgs boson took place.

During both events, Dr. Angelos Lazoudis from EA informed the teachers (about 10 in each event) about the Inspiring Science education activities and how they could register their schools and submit an action plan.