BiH Teachers Visit CERN, Where Science Meets the Secrets of the Universe

A group of some 20 mathematics and physics teachers from all parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina spent last week at the world's largest laboratory – CERN in Geneva.

A wellspring of knowledge about the nature of our reality was within their reach, which undoubtedly shows that the visit to this small city of science was one of the most inspiring of their lives. This is just a small excerpt from the bigger story followed by the Klix.ba portal.

CERN, the headquarters of the European Council for Nuclear Research, is located not far from Geneva on the border between Switzerland and France. Its importance stems from its history, as it was here that the first website was created, and in 2012 the "God particle" was discovered here.

Today, scientists at CERN conduct dozens of experiments focusing on the tiny world of the smallest known particles that make up our reality. By colliding them at high speeds in an accelerator 27 kilometres long, they gain insight into how our universe is built.

Besides almost routinely confirming already known facts, scientists at CERN dream of new discoveries that would build on or refute existing ones, because current knowledge, as all the world's physicists will agree, is not complete.

For example, gravity and dark matter cannot find their place in the Standard Model of particle physics, the theory that best explains the composition of the matter around us. This is a big problem, but also the reason CERN exists. The key to advancing our understanding of the universe, and with it the advancement of applied technology, lies in CERN's continued work and its future expansion.

What is the role of our scientists and what does BiH have to do with CERN? Our country has quite a few breakdowns in the functioning of the apparatus we call the state, and education is the wheel that all too often suffers because of the weaknesses of the whole system. Small budgets, a lack of interest and an almost non-existent vision among decision-makers, regardless of the level of government, cost the youngest citizens of this country dearly. And they will continue to cost them dearly.

Nevertheless, there are forces that resist, and the First Bosnian-Herzegovinian CERN Teacher Programme, the official name of last week's visit, is a great result of hard work and dedication.

The desire for change and progress is shared by individuals such as Senad Isaković, a teaching assistant in the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Science, University of Sarajevo.

As Isaković told the Klix.ba portal, the programme was packed with lectures by experts working at CERN and numerous tours of the laboratories there.

"I would particularly single out the tour of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), which is one of the two largest detectors used for general-purpose research into elementary particles. It was especially interesting to visit this experiment, because it is located about 100 metres below the surface and can only be visited when no collisions are taking place, which happens only every few years," Isaković explained.

Other highlights included a visit to a real Antimatter Factory, a visit to the school laboratory where a small particle detector was built, and lectures on particle physics and cosmology given by the Bosnian-Herzegovinian physicist Admir Greljo and the Serbian cosmologist Marko Simonović.

On the last day of the programme, the participants were presented with certificates from the European Council for Nuclear Research at a small ceremony.

Isaković said that the programme was of very high quality and interesting, and that the teachers were able to learn a great deal that was new in elementary particle physics itself, and especially about the latest research currently being carried out at CERN.

"It was also great that they taught us how to teach this kind of physics to children in secondary schools and incorporate it into the curriculum. The way of teaching this kind of physics in secondary schools is precisely the most important thing that all the teachers, including me, learned on this trip.

The programme, our interviewee says, absolutely met the teachers' expectations.

"You could see this from their reactions during the lectures and visits to the research centres at CERN, and from the regret on their faces on the last day of the programme, which showed how sad they were that the programme had ended and that they had to head back to BiH," said Isaković.

As the participants told the Klix.ba portal at the very beginning, on their return to BiH the teachers will try, thanks to the wealth of material and knowledge they received, to pass on their impressions to their pupils and students, which they hope will spark a new love of science or strengthen an existing one.

The next programme of this kind can be expected as early as next year, when 24 new physics teachers are planned to visit CERN.

The programme would not have been possible without ANNT, the Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology, and the financial assistance provided by Mistral Technologies, Konica Minolta poslovna rješenja BH, Dobojputevi dd, AtlantBH, Kamer commerce PJ Plus computers, Racional and MPS.

Support from BiH institutions was lacking this time, but the hope remains that future projects of this kind will be supported by the most important institutions of our homeland, and the organisers hope that in the future the projects will be led by the competent education ministries in the country.

Source: klix.ba