"Kids' University" Family Event Attracted a Huge Crowd

Going to college during vacation? The Haus der Wissenschaft’s plan to kick off the fall semester of the Siegen Children’s University was an experiment. And: The experiment of hosting a family event on the last day of the North Rhine-Westphalia summer vacation was a success. For the overarching theme “Colorful Diversity in Europe,” the Schadeberg Lecture Hall at the Lecture Hall Center was very, very full. Parents, siblings, and grandparents were allowed to come along as a special exception and took full advantage of this opportunity. This special event focused on very large machines and very small particles. Physicist Prof. Dr. Thomas Mannel invited the audience on an exciting journey to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. 

Thomas Mannel had brought a strip of paper with him. What’s left of a 50-centimeter strip if you cut it in half with scissors? How many times can you cut the halves in half by hand with scissors? Perhaps down to a size of one millimeter? After that, other tools are needed to split particles and detect them. These massive tools—in the form of colliders (accelerators) and detectors—are available at CERN. The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) runs underground for 26 kilometers, spanning both Swiss and French territory. The particles, which are accelerated in this ring and eventually brought into collision, reach nearly the speed of light. 11,000 times per second, the accelerated particles—which are kept on track by cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets—cross the boundary. When they collide, they shatter into many tiny particles, which are recorded by the detection devices and made visible to the scientists. Thomas Mannel: “Very rarely, something interesting happens in the collisions. For example, the so-called Higgs boson was discovered in 2012.”

Physicists from Siegen also developed and built the innermost pixel detector of the so-called ATLAS experiment as part of a collaboration. One goal of this large-scale laboratory is to explore what holds the world together at its very core and what the world looks like at both the largest and smallest scales.

The decision to found CERN was made 75 years ago (1951). According to Thomas Mannel, research in the field of nuclear physics gained importance after World War II. European nations joined forces to conduct joint research and share the associated costs. Given that CERN is publicly funded, all of its research results are publicly accessible. The Federal Republic of Germany is the largest contributor, covering approximately 20 percent of the annual budget.

CERN currently has 25 member states, 11 associate members, and two “observer” members. Interest in the research extends far beyond Europe. 2,762 scientists work permanently at CERN, along with 1,235 fellows and 1,471 visiting scientists.

The focus is on basic research. Thomas Mannel: “Curiosity is the driving force.” And the physicist wants to spark that curiosity in young people at a very early age, not least through the Children’s University.