The university in the classroom; UvA physicists take over the classroom
Not only in the French-Swiss CERN do they deal with particle physics. In Dutch secondary schools, too, it is daily fare. Yet academia is not able to reach everyone. That is why physicists of the Amsterdam-based Nikhef take over the physics lesson at the Petrus Canisius College in Alkmaar for a day.
At 8:30 a.m. sharp, the school bell rings through the hallways of the Petrus Canisius College in Alkmaar. The VWO-6 students trickle into the classroom of physics teacher Paul Zuurbier and take their seats at triangular tables. This is not a normal Thursday morning, for Mr. Zuurbier is not in front of the class. Instead, physicists Saad El Morabit, a PhD student at the UvA, and Heleen Mulder, a PhD student at the RUG, from the National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef), are taking over the class for a day.
The lesson is part of the “Researcher in the Classroom” program to which the UvA is also affiliated. This initiative aims to make research and an academic career more accessible to students, regardless of family background or education. “Internal research showed that students who come to Nikhef to do profile papers on physics are mainly gymnasium students,” says program coordinator Jordy de Vries. This time, Mulder and El Morabit give a lesson in particle physics and talk about their experiences as researchers to the more than 20 students present.
Read more below the picture.
The standard model of particle physics
“Particle physics is the branch of physics that deals with the smallest building blocks in existence, the elementary particles,” Mulder explains. “It is these elementary particles from which atoms, for example, are made,” she continues. “This is described in the Standard Model of Physics. Who can tell me about this model?” asks Mulder at the beginning of her lesson. The class is silent as a mouse. On the digital blackboard, a complicated diagram appears in which quarks, leptons, and bosons, together with the Higgs particle, are colorfully arranged according to their properties such as force field and mass. A kind of periodic table, but for physics.
“How do we actually know that these particles all exist?” asks a student, Yander (18). El Morabit elaborates: “We know it through various experiments in which we let existing particles collide with each other. For example, in the French-Swiss CERN, where protons are fired at each other at very high speeds. In this particle accelerator, we measure their properties, such as the mass of the newly-created particles.” Meanwhile, Mulder shows some photos of the particle accelerator’s 27-kilometer-long ring-shaped tunnel. “Besides the experiments, there is also a lot of complex math involved that cannot be done on paper. We need very powerful computers for that,” El Morabit adds.
The break
Now that the students’ minds have been opened up after twenty minutes it is time for a short break and a demonstration. The researchers ask that the curtains be closed and to dim the lights in the classroom. At the front of the classroom, a large glass sphere lights up. It is filled with blue-rose “lightning flashes.” “Just to refresh your knowledge of electricity and gas discharge,” El Morabit begins. “These colored threads of plasma are created because electromagnetic radiation ionizes the noble gas inside the sphere.” El Morabit passes his fingertips over the sphere, causing the “lightning flashes” to move toward his fingers. “Because of the electromagnetic radiation, you can also indirectly turn on the gas in a fluorescent tube by holding it there. Who wants to try it?”
A student, Daniel (17), steps forward and takes a fluorescent tube in his hand. Like El Morabit, he holds the tube close to the glass bulb. “How come the tube behind my hand doesn’t burn?” he asks, a bit irritated. “We humans are conductors, so we ‘ground’ the electric charge, so to speak, which prevents an electric current from flowing through the rest of the fluorescent tube,” El Morabit explains.
The life of a researcher
In the second part of the lesson, Mulder and El Morabit share their experiences as researchers. El Morabit, who recently started his PhD program at the University of Amsterdam, tells the class about his career: “I used to fix old broken radios. I ended up studying Physics and Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam. My master’s research was on the cosmic neutrino background.” The latter seems to be a bridge too far for the classroom. Still, he tries to explain it simply. “Cosmic neutrino background is the radiation of elementary particles from the universe and is thought to have originated just after the Big Bang. So it helps us to understand that moment better.”
Mulder is a theoretician. A physicist with a PhD from the University of Groningen, she does research at Nikhef at the University of Groningen on various theories behind particle physics; lots of math, little experimentation. Without getting too technical, she tells the class about her life as a researcher. “Besides doing research and writing reports, as a researcher you also travel a lot,” she says. Pictures appear in the background, including of the Atomium in Brussels. “You visit different conferences and meet different fellow physicists worldwide to exchange knowledge and ideas.”
Success
After the class, we speak with Zuurbier and a group of students. “It’s cool to see the people behind the research and textbooks for once,” says Fenna. “I had no idea that doing research takes so much time,” Mark adds. Zuurbier proudly listens to his students’ discussions. Mark and Fenna, in fact, were very captivated by the lesson and talk about their considerations to study Aerospace at TU Delft or Astronomy at the VU. Another student, Hayley (17), looks doubtful. She is going to study hotel and event management in Amsterdam.
