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Antimatter. It is the exact opposite of normal matter. At the beginning of the universe, matter and antimatter were created from energy in equal amounts. Most of the matter and antimatter then annihilated, producing energy in the form of photons. Today, the universe is a sea of photons with a small amount of matter and an even smaller amount of antimatter left behind.
 

The aim of the challenge is to create an interactive exhibit where visitors can understand the nature and/or importance of antimatter.

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Deliverables
Prototype of an exhibit for visitors to CERN
Audience
Visitors to CERN
Future Scope
Development into a fully-fledged exhibit

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Gravity. It is the force that keeps us grounded. In 2016, scientists announced the first direct observation of gravitational waves, exactly 100 years after Einstein predicted them on the basis of his general theory of relativity. This landmark observation was made using the LIGO detectors which use lasers, mirrors, and extremely sensitive instruments to detect tiny changes in spacetime as a gravitational wave passes by.

 

In this challenge, participants should design an exhibit where visitors can grasp the concept of gravitational waves through the medium of light. Visitors can learn that gravitational waves are disturbances in spacetime, are generated by accelerating masses, and travel at the speed of light. Visitors should also understand how light fringes from a laser interferometer are used to detect gravitational waves.

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Deliverables

Prototype of an exhibit for visitors to CERN

Audience

Visitors to CERN

Future Scope

Development into a fully-fledged exhibit

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Protons. Crucial for everything we do at CERN, and crucial for everything in the universe! A large part of the mass of a proton comes from the forces that hold the constituent particles together (no, not the Higgs boson!). Will you take up the challenge of designing an activity for visitors to discover that the mass of the quarks inside an atom/proton only makes up a tiny fraction of its total mass?

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Deliverables

Prototype of an exhibit for visitors to CERN

Audience

Visitors to CERN

Future Scope

Development into a fully-fledged exhibit

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You started working at CERN only a few months ago, but you’ve already signed up to become an official guide at the Antimatter Factory, your supervisor has encouraged you to organize an early career conference in your field, and your friends are asking you about the discovery of the Higgs boson. On top of that, you intend to give a talk at your childhood school and do a physics demo at the local science fair later this year. How are you going to prepare for each of these activities? How will you find the resources that you need? How will you take advantage of the material already out there?

Providing organized and user friendly access to resources and information is an important objective for both scientific work and science outreach. In this challenge, participants should build a repository for science communication in particles physics. Users, both experts and non-experts, depending on their background, needs and curiosities, should be able to navigate through the repository following suitable paths.

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Deliverables

A repository (website) for science communicators in particle physics.

Audience

Scientists, science communicators

Future Scope

Extend the website to be suitable for the general public

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Imagine yourself in a quantum world, solving a puzzle. You will experience quantum entanglement, interference, superposition, and tunneling. In a virtual space you will have objects (e.g slits and qubits) to play with, and you’ll get to modify them by either drawing or folding origami shapes in the physical world or by designing these objects in the virtual world.

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Deliverables

Prototype of a full mixed reality experience illustrating at least one of these quantum effects in the chosen virtual platform

Concepts for illustrating the remaining quantum effects

Audience

Visitors of exhibition, in particular high school students

Future Scope

Development into a fully-fledged exhibit

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Time. It waits for no one. How many times while working on a project have you wished you had a time machine to go back and do things differently, or to step into the future and see what your project would look like? Unfortunately, we haven’t discovered a way to do that yet, but we can try to find ways to improve communication, coordination and understanding of the state of the project at any given time.

 

In this challenge participants should come up with a physical system to visualize the status of a project, people involved, activities, etc. The aim of the system is to be conscious of the state of the project, identify problems, ease the communication between people involved and therefore improve the quality of work and reduce the time taken. Ideally it will be an interactive system connected to a database so it updates easily.

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Deliverables

Prototype of the time turner system

Audience

Anyone involved in a project, e.g. colleagues, supervisors, funding bodies, general public

Future Scope

Include aspects such as notifications or reminders sent to people who sign up (so that they can get periodic updates)

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Volunteers. They are the cornerstone for most science outreach activities. From inspiring young girls to pursue STEM careers to coordinating visitors during the Open Days, CERN relies on the commitment, dedication, and goodwill of thousands of volunteers for its programs. Recruiting them is a difficult task, and retaining them is even more challenging. What can you do to motivate people to volunteer and continue to give their time? How can you find the right volunteers for the right type of task? What incentives can you offer to recruit and retain volunteers without exploiting them?

 

In this challenge, participants should design a template campaign to recruit volunteers for the next big CERN event. The aim of this challenge is to streamline the volunteer recruitment process while being conscious of the needs and constraints of the volunteers.

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Deliverables

Some form of recruitment campaign

Audience

Event managers, event organizers, outreach coordinators

Future Scope

Go from recruitment to management of volunteers (could be a website or an app)