120 physics teachers at SOLEIL on 20 October 2010
The physics and chemistry inspectorate of the Versailles education authority organised a conference and tour entitled “Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and SOLEIL synchrotron, two large-scale research facilities” last Thursday, 20 October, from 2 pm to 5:30 pm, at SOLEIL synchrotron.
Every year the inspectorate organises a half-day conference on various themes. Last year’s topic was the CNES, while this year an overview of these two large-scale scientific facilities at the cutting-edge of research was presented to the 120 secondary school teachers in attendance. This was not the first visit to SOLEIL for all of them, since from its inception, SOLEIL has endeavoured to build up close ties between research, education and culture, and has in particular developed a promising relationship with the Versailles Education Office.
This year’s programme was nonetheless exceptional thanks to Nicolas Arnaud, a researcher at the LAL (Linear Accelerator Laboratory - In2p3, Université Paris Sud Orsay), who represented the LHC and spoke on the major issues confronting particle physics today, and Paul Dumas, manager of the SMIS beamline (SOLEIL synchrotron’s infrared spectroscopy beamline), who presented an overview of research at SOLEIL. All participants were also invited to take a tour of the facility.
