NMA@CERN

During the three days on February 17-19, NMA students participated in a virtual NMA winter session with subject lectures in the morning and additional activity in the afternoon. This was the first session I organized for physics students as the head of NMA physics section. In the last half a year I managed the preparation and delivery of distant learning problem sets to NMA students (problem sets were mostly written by helper tutors). We studied a large number of rather advanced modern physics topics. Similarly, I wanted the physics lectures to be about physics in the “real world”.

Students heard about research in lasers, atmospheric physics, and even microfluidics. I contributed with a hands-on lecture on scientific Python programming and an introduction to CERN. However, I was most pleased about the successfully organized virtual visit to CMS experiment, which was one of the common school activities. Thanks to the very helpful CMS visitor center team and two great Lithuanians - Vilius and Andrius - working at CERN, the virtual visit was a resounding success.

Vilius and I were commenting from the CMS control room, while Andrius joined remotely. In the meantime, the technical support team showed around the CMS cavern. With over 100 connected attendees we were bombarded with a stream of questions and in an intense hour and a half we managed to answer over seventy of them.

The questions were very interesting, and it was great fun to respond to them. It was especially nice that Vilius, Andrius, and I represented different aspects of CERN work, namely experimental physics, computer science, and theoretical physics. This illustrates that CERN is composed of many people with often very different skills and interests. The visit was recorded and can be viewed online.