Βeamline for Schools (BL4S) Competition

Great things can happen when high schools get involved with innovative science, and that is exactly the environment CERN wants to create for them by organizing the Beamline for Schools competition. CERN is famous for the discovery of the Higgs boson, the invention of the World Wide Web, but there is much more to the laboratory than that. A large part of CERN’s research and development is carried out at so-called fixed-target beamlines. These projects range from probing the mysteries of antimatter to the testing of new generations of detectors.

From the first edition in 2014 until 2018, the winners of the BL4S competition have performed their experiments at the PS accelerator, door to door with senior physicists and engineers. For the professionals as much as for the high-school students, 2019 and 2020 will bring some change. The PS as well as all other accelerators at CERN are turned off for maintenance.

In order to continue BL4S, CERN has teamed up with DESY, Hamburg, the German national laboratory for particle physics, accelerators and photon science. Like CERN, DESY operates several large accelerators. Its flagship, the European XFEL, produces intense flashes of X-rays that will allow scientists to map atomic details of viruses, film chemical reactions, and study the processes in the interior of planets. Links between CERN and DESY have traditionally been strong and researchers of either organization participate actively in the research programmes of the other.

Despite the high demand for beam time from professional physicists, DESY has reserved time at its “DESY II” electron / position accelerator. The winners of BL4S 2020 will perform their experiments at these facilities and will receive support from their experts.

Further details:
Βeamline for Schools (BL4S) Competition