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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.

Particle detectives

In this lesson, students explore how physicists are collecting and using evidence from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to learn more about the origins of the Universe. They begin by watching an animation set in the LHC, and learn that physicists are using the LHC to try to recreate the conditions immediately after the Big Bang.

Which particles are each detector designed to detect? Which theories are physicists testing? To conclude, students discuss some important questions, including the role of international collaboration in science, and what happens if newly-collected data does not agree with established theory.

Learning Outcomes

  • Students understand that physicists are trying to learn more about how the universe started.

  • Students understand that physicists do this by trying to recreate the conditions immediately after the Big Bang, examine the data thus produced and then refine our models of the universe and the Big Bang.

 

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