Outreach
One only really understands physics when one can explain it to the barmaid in the local pub
What is Outreach?
The explanation of the concepts of basic research to non-experts is usually referred to as outreach. Nowadays, with the dwindling number of students choosing scientific subjects is in sharp contrast with the demand of scientists in all different roles of society (so not only to work at universities or research labs like CERN). Science is considered either hard, or boring or both. This is particularly interesting as the jobs that scientists hold are typically not boring at all, these are some of the more wanted jobs society but some way or another this concept is not conveyed to high school students when they choose or plan their future.
Why?
CMS outreach
In the CMS collaboration I've been active in the outreach committee for a while. One of my contributions was the Dutch translation of the CMS brochure. The CMS brochure is aimed at advanced high school students, and explains in two pages what CMS is trying to measure, why this is interesting and also relevant for people who are not directly contributing to basic particle physics research.
List of documents related to outreach
Please find a (non-exaustive) list of outreach documents by my hand.
| YEAR | TITLE | LINK | NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | CMS brochure | The public brochure of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment | |
| 2007 | SET-routes | ppt | My set-routes presentation as given at the Montessori Lyceum and Fons Vitae Lyceum, in Amsterdam and the Amstelveen college (in Amstelveen). |
| 2007 | EUCYS | ppt | At the EUCYS07 conference I presented the EIROForum presentation on basic science at CERN |
Media coverage
And some coverage of my outreach activities in the media
| YEAR | SOURCE | LINK | NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 2007 | Volkskrant | One of the leading national newspapers in the Netherlands did a four-page story on CERN, the LHC and ATLAS and CMS | |
| September 2007 | NRC handelsblad | One of the leading national newspapers in the Netherlands. I supplied information for this article. | |
| September 2007 | EUCYS web pagper | A photo report of my public lecture at the EUCYS07 conference in Valencia, Spain. | |
| September 2007 | CMS times | html | The CMS times featured my presentation on EUCYS07. |
| October 2007 | CMS times | html | The Cornell University group was covered as group-of-the-week in CMS times. The item includes an video interview (mp4) with me. |
| May 2008 | Holland Doc | html | A (short) web video where I speak (in Dutch) about searching for physics beyond the standard model |