Development of Outreach Activities at CERN
Internship with the exhibition team of the CERN Science Gateway, CERN's science and education centre. I designed short demonstrations for the exhibits and trained the guides to deliver them.
Context & Objectives
The CERN Science Gateway is working with student guides for its permanent exhibition. However, since not all of them have a background in particle physics, it was difficult for some of them to discuss topics as complex as those covered by CERN. In addition, the teams realized that some visitors are uncomfortable asking questions in the exhibits.
To address these issues, CERN decided to introduce “demonstrations.” Guides trained in these demonstrations will then be able to spontaneously offer them to nearby visitors, thereby sparking a conversation. These demonstrations also help redirect visitor flow and make their movement through the site more fluid.
The goal of my internship was to develop scripts for five of these demonstrations. Once the scripts were complete, I was tasked with training the guides on how to conduct them.
Role & Responsibilities
- Insulator (a device designed to test the insulating properties of different materials using a thermal camera)
- Locate the Particle (a device simulating the interior of a detector)
- Proton Puzzle (a setup designed to determine the composition of protons and neutrons)
- Double Slit (a setup designed to replicate Young’s double-slit experiment)
- Virtual Particle (a setup simulating the phenomenon of virtual particles)
- Management of training schedules
- Training of 16 guides