St Mary’s has entered the 2017 CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) Beamline for Schools competition, in association with St John’s College and Barnato Park High School. Some of our Form IV scientists attended particle physics lectures given by Professor Simon Connell of the University of Johannesburg, in order to become au fait with current scientic discoveries in this field. The girls were then required to design an experiment that they could perform at CERN on the beamline.

To enter the competition they had to write a scientic proposal and shoot a video. The video can be viewed here. These were submitted to CERN in March, and we will hear the outcome of our efforts at the end of June. CERN received over 180 entries from schools worldwide and the winning two teams will be invited to CERN in Geneva to perform their experiment, all expenses paid.

It was a fantastic opportunity for the pupils to learn current physics not in the school curriculum, and to be exposed to the types of experiments on which professional scientists work.

We thank Dr Colleen Henning and Professor Connell for inviting us to be a part of this collaboration.

Melanie Blair

HOD: Physical and Natural Science