INFN-LNF Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati
The National Laboratory of Frascati offered the students from the “T. C. Onesti” High School in Fermo a chance to work on one of its particle accelerators: the Beam Test Facility.
The TCO-4ASA class of the school in the Marche was one of the finalists of the international contest “A Beamline for Schools”, organized every year by CERN, that this year saw the participation of over 150 schools from all over the world.
The BTF team helped the students in setting up their experiment, running it and analyzing the data as in an actual scientific collaboration. The students put in the beamline a small dark room (only 20 cm fitting into a bigger dark box) filled with distilled water, with two cameras ( a color camera and a grey scale camera) each paired up with a transparent glass with an axis perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the beamline. The goal was to witness a possible photon excess due to the Cherenkov effect in water, a goal achieved in the late evening.
The students were expertly led by Professor Maria Rita Felici with great enthusiasm, showing promising experimental skills. The National Laboratory of Frascati wishes them a future full of experiments, hoping to see them again soon in Frascati!