Abingdonian 2018

14 The Abingdonian Geneva Physics Trip During the Christmas break myself and other pupils from Abingdon School went to Geneva in Switzerland to visit the fantastic physics facilities that the country has to offer. During my time there I learnt about the historical significance of Switzerland in the development of science and got to see the cutting edge technology that is pushing forward the boundaries of modern physics. On our arrival at Geneva we participated in a walking tour of the old town with buildings dating back to the 12th century and the ruins of Roman temples dating back to the 1st century. The maze of small streets and picturesque squares overlooked the Lake Geneva including the Jet d’Eau, a massive water jet stretching 140 metres high and throwing 7000 litres of water into the air at any given time. Having visited the old town we then took the tram service that runs through the streets of Geneva to the History of Science Museum. Here many important artifacts are kept showing the history and development of scientific instruments that have been made in Geneva, many of which are from the original observatory founded by Jacques-André Mallet in 1772. The telescopes found here played an important role in the development of Genevan society. They allowed the accurate study of the night sky which attracted many scientists who did not want to make the long trip to Paris or Greenwich. Even more important than this however, was the impact that telescopes had on time keeping. The big problem faced by sailors in the 18th century was that there was no easy way of knowing your location at sea. The solution to this problem was to create books of data and coordinates that could be taken on the ship and were used by referencing the location of significant stars in the sky. In addition, the focus on accurate time keeping allowed watch makers to calibrate all their watches to an unmatched standard. It was fascinating to see how one building was crucial to making Geneva what it is today. The following day we again took the tram service but this time to visit the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire or CERN. There are a multitude of experiments conducted at CERN and we were lucky to see one of them, the LHC. The LHC or Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator even making mainstream headline news with the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. The 22 member countries of CERN spent around one billion euros in building the equipment and conducting the experiments. Protons which are subsidiary components of the nucleus of