Head's Newsletter 27 April 2018

I firstly need to emphasise to all physicists out there, that if you think you have an idea at the moment of what goes on behind the gates of the RAL, you would be simply left in awe if you were to step inside. When we think of particle accelerators, we often consider just the event of the collision. However, as we were given tours of the different buildings and listened to various lectures, we became aware of just how much thought and engineering work is put into creating the right conditions for the particles to be accelerated in the first place. Nevertheless, the collision itself is what most of us get excited about, so towards the end of the day, we got the chance of looking at real images from the Large Hadron Collider on a computer, just like real researchers would do, with the objective of finding out what particles are created. One of the images included the actual snapshot which led to the discovery of the Higgs boson! To conclude, it was a unique day and I would recommend this experience to any particle physics enthusiasts; if someone is considering studying this for a degree, the RAL even offers weeks of work experience during the summer! Eduard Bruchner Y12

The Tiffin Under 13 rounded off a fine indoor campaign by finishing as Surrey Indoor Champions. This was a marvellous team performance in which all 8 of those who represented the school had a major hand in winning the trophy. Farhaan Shaikh; Chirag Patel; Ashwin Bosé; Alex Cormack; Iain Westbrook; Shivan Aggarwal; Harshil Shah; Datta Vasireddy (Captain) RUTHERFORD APPLETON LABORATORY On Wednesday 14 th March, Charlie Rogers and I visited the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, accompanied by Mr Rennie.