Since 2006-7, the School of Physics & Astronomy, sponsored by PPARC and STFC, has been organising Particle Physics competitions to encourage students with an interest in Physics to share their enthusiasm with other students in their own school and others – Cascades of Particle Physics!
In these competitions, A Level and GCSE students from all over the country are invited to prepare interactive presentations and/or videos/animations, to introduce some of the concepts of Particle Physics to other students in innovative and entertaining ways.
Over the past few years, over 100 schools all over the UK have got involved, entering teams of students who are keen to share their knowledge and inspire other students to take an interest.
Videos of winning presentations
Winning teams have had opportunities to meet cutting edge researchers working on the ATLAS and ALICE experiments, based here at Birmingham, and have also used prize money to help fund visits to CERN and see the impressive facilities there.
The participants learn a lot of physics and have a lot of fun researching and preparing their entries.
Report and pictures of particle physics events in 2011-2012
Cascade Competition 2012
We are considering a new video cascade competition in 2013 - please see forthcoming events for any notifications.