Outreach Meeting of 02-03 June 2000 / Palais de la Découverte - Paris

List of Participants:

Invitees:

Welcome from R. Deloche, Director of Palais de la Découverte.

FC welcomed delegates and introduced T. Velhinho replacing M Abreu for the meeting.

Yves Sacquin quickly presented the Palais de la Decouverte and announced a street theatre WWW "What a Wonderful World" on Particle Physics which would taken place in Paris on the Saturday.

• The Greek Outreach pages are now linked from the OR pages.
• A catalogue of exhibition material, mostly from the microcosm, which can be borrowed is available on the web at http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/Microcosm/objects/home.

Copies of the new "Boixader Cartoon Book" are now available: Delegates should contact NC for hard copies. CDs for PC and Mac are available from Ray Lewis. The cost of producing CD was discussed and surprise expressed at the high cost (10 CHF) per item. A figure of 2CHF was suggested by AP and others as being the normal price for producing CDs.

NC reported on progress with Physics on Stage (POS). The OR group is at the core of this activity and are to be congratulated on their efforts. FC reminded delegates how the whole project had arisen out of the meeting in April 1999 where a wish to reach teachers throughout Europe had been raised. A fortunate chance then arose when ESO contacted NC and the POS project then grew out of this.

NC outlined the current schedule for the international festival at CERN during the week of November 5-11, 2000.The performances which will take place in the amphitheatre will be recorded and webcast.

The PoS web site can be found at:

EJ,CS and AP presented some outreach ideas developed by a small working group of EJ,CS,AP, CG and M Barnett (ATLAS and Quarknet). A short summary of the ideas is presented below and the full document is accessible on the internet at:

http://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/documents/stuff/proposal.doc

They propose that these ideas form the basis of two applications to the EU for related projects: viz. An Educational Material proposal and an Exhibition proposal

To proceed, the participation and support of the European Particle Physics Outreach community is essential. Two working groups should be set up, with 5-6 people in each, to define the details of the proposals - the content, the organisation, the collaborators and the participants. Christine Sutton (c.sutton1@physics.oxford.ac.uk) will be in charge of the Education proposal working group and Alessandro Pascolini (pascolini@pd.infn.it) will be in charge of the Exhibition proposal working group. The two working groups will work very closely together and they intend to have joint meetings in the autumn. It is important for them to know very soon any interest in and support for the High Energy Frontier education and exhibition proposals as they need to set up the working groups during the summer.

AW reported on LHCb where a competition to write a web page on CP violation, with champagne as prize, had attracted only one entry. Discussions took place on how to get more response. Using the CERN Bulletin to expand the competition CERN-wide was one suggestion. It was also pointed out that LHC is more than Higgs and the CERN management should encourage all users that CP, B etc all need popularising if the public are to stay convinced this is a worthwhile venture. (These remarks were passed to JAR on the Saturday morning and JAR took note).

DB reported on CMS. Their posters are in two parts - one for the public one for physicists, and are available as pdf files for download. They are quite general about LHC and not specific to CMS. They can be found via the CMS main page, by clicking on "CMS Outreach". The link to the CMS Outreach Page:

http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/cms/TRIDAS/html/outreach.html

is now in place in the CERN pages of the OR Web.

CD business cards were shown, cost will be approximately $1 each, full of information about CERN etc. An application is being made in the UK to PPARC to support the creation of a CMS/HEP business card aimed at UK,schools, universities. Useful to see what comes of this at a future meeting to see if is worth copying elsewhere.

A video of CMS activities was shown, including an animation of detector construction at Cessy. The construction will also be recorded on video.

EJ reported on ATLAS. There is an 18 minute ATLAS video (suggested this be shown at next meeting). This was made by private company so copyright has to be checked before it can be put on web. EJ has asked organisers of International Conferences (e.g. Osaka) to have an ATLAS outreach session organised. Euro and USA outreach people could meet together with others from the rest of the world.

ACTION: Discuss this item at October OR meeting.

MD outlined, on behalf of Michelangelo Mangano, the High School Teachers programme which will take place from 2-22 July. The funding has been provided by ETT. The OR group had participated in selecting participants. 14 of 19 countries involved; no applications from Denmark, Germany (except DESY teacher), France, Holland, nor Norway. Three from 1999 programme were invited to return as discussion leaders.

Discussion on optimum time and structure ensued. Three weeks is still regarded as too much in some countries. CG will attend, as a discussion leader, and can give feedback from the "inside". Weekend teachers groups visiting CERN, as supported by the OR budget in the past, was strongly encouraged to continue.

CS pointed out that after the teachers have visited CERN in July, it is important that there be contact between those teachers and the HEP community in their countries; this will need effort.

Suggestion that in the future this programme could be expanded to non-member states (Japan, Russia) (there is already USA presence). This could lead to closer co-operation between CERN and other outreach people. Also it could help consolidate links with Quarknet.

GP reported on plans for outreach at at the EPS2001 confrence in Budapest, July 12-18 2001.

There will be popularisation of science as a whole: "World of Nature". Before the conference the media will be notified of details of eminent participants. The Minister of Education will open the conference.

There is a plan for an open evening public lecture(s). Well known physicists should be invited to give these; names have not yet been decided. The idea is to have talks on the beauty of HEP and its applications.

Possible new EPS prizes for young experimentalist and theorist and outreach. Media will be invited to opening ceremony and medallists introduced.

MK reported on extensive "poster street" material during a festival "Journey to Big Bang". This material apparently exists as pdf files on web.

Large number of popular talks were given and will be repeated at DESY.

Links forged between Bonn University and local schools. Visits to physics classes were made over period of 3-4 months, one visit a week for an hour.

PvH on behalf of DESY invited the OR group to hold its next meeting at DESY. It seemed that the best time would be around the 20-21 October 2000. We could aim to start the meeting on Friday 20^th at lunchtime and continue on the Saturday. This will give delegates the possibility to get cheaper plane tickets.

NT showed extensive translations of Courier, UK picture of the week, CERN posters and Microcosm material into Greek on the national web pages.

When any particle physics meeting or CERN workshop takes place in Greece, visits to high schools are organised so that popular talks can be given.

Anne Gaud McKee reported on "The Oracle at Delphi", a hugely successful mime performance on Dirac and antimatter in the Delphi pit. 60 performances were given and it was reviewed in Nature. The full synopsis, images, plans for world tour etc can be found under

http://www.unige.ch/mimescope/delphi/welcomee.html

Any delegates that would like to help this performance happen in their own country, please contact Mimescope by email:

anne.gaud@biochem.unige.ch

Delegates visited the travelling exhibition that was about to open at the museum. There was broad agreement that the content was much improved compared to previously. Comments for further improvements included:

• Standard Model (SM) in the final section needs lighting permanently; the press button lights only stay on in individual quark-lepton families for a few seconds and it is not possible to view the whole SM in one go.
• Important that the "XXX" be carefully placed on the floor in order that the person looking at the mirror is indeed at the focal point such that their image goes off to infinity. Also explain carefully what is happening. Establish the size of atoms and the role of electron mass first, perhaps as an extra graphic, in order to motivate better the Higgs cartoons.
• The cosmic ray detector should be triggered to go boom more frequently and a graphic be added behind it to show idea of rays passing through.
• The video on quarks in the proton, provided locally by Yves Sacquin, is very good; it extends the depth of the material, as such is suitable for more sophisticated visitors, and is worth having it copied by CERN and used on a regular basis at future venues.

The next exhibition will take place in Kraków from October 2000 until February 2001.

It has been suggested by the Human Resources (HR) Division of CERN that the travelling exhibition could be a vehicle for informing the public of employment possibilities at CERN They plan to create a small corner near the exhibition where they can set up some posters and where they can meet people on a one-to-one basis. The contact for this activity is Frank Cliff (frank.cliff@cern.ch). If this proves successful in Krakówit could become a standard accessory to the CERN Travelling Exhibition.

JAR reported on activities on outreach that come under the responsibility of CERN's ETT division. A vigorous discussion took place on various items, in particular Microcosm, Webcasting, Visits and Guides. Some specific points included: The availability of hard copy materials for visitors (whether free as in the press office or paid for as at Bat 33 entrance); optimising the use of CERN guides (whereas CERN employees are routinely encouraged to be guides, there are also many fellows and visitors, on long term attachments from their home institutions, who would make excellent guides but are not uniformly reached by the current system).

CS, AP and EJ re-explained their project (see above) and asked for some technical assistance from CERN (like writing the proposal). JAR mentioned that there were a few people at CERN with experience in preparing proposals for the EU. He committed CERN's help in the project.

There was a spirited discussion on the Webcast which is summarised below:

It is necessary to separate two aspects of webcasting:

• webcasting as a medium (excellent when used for the right audience and with the right material -see below);
• webcasting as a "pop show"
• concern about content and fear that CERN may be getting involved in areas outside its primary expertise;
• in particular knowing what the teenage school students in 20 nations are doing,
• resources could be better targeted for this particular market.

There was clearly a positive response from inside CERN. The OR delegates from the member states did not, by and large, have such a positive reaction and it was noticeable that there was a gap between the perception of success from those directly involved at the delivery end, and those from outside.

It was difficult to know how many individuals and/or classes of school children actually 'tuned-in' for the whole Webcast as the statistics had not yet been analysed fully. It was not clear what was the REAL response was on the streets?

There appeared to be some technical problems with images freezing from several of the delegates who had watched the webcast. The success in Finland turned out to be because they had used a different system driven by Riita Rinta Fillpulla. So it was not clear to what extent the positive feedback from Finland could be compared with other countries. It was recognised, however, that the technology is improving.

There are areas where CERN could clearly profit from this technology: e.g. for the "professional" events such as seminars, lectures, summer students talks, etc. There was great hope among delegates that this use will be developed. The concern is that CERN gets over ambitious and loses sight of its purpose: CERN does research; its prime customers are its researchers, some of whom have expertise at developing public awareness in their nations. CERN has also developed hard copy materials (videos, photos, pamphlets, posters, etc.) to reach media and visitors.

However, CERN is NOT an expert in the world of high school education and while there may be a place for occasional targeted "populist" webcasts, the delegates had a fear that the "cart could get before the horse".

For example, one clear irony is that for budgetary reasons CERN is not able to distribute videos, slides and other (low-tech) publicity material freely to visitors - with all the associated good publicity for CERN which this can bring. We are however spending significant sums on populist webcasting where the return is less clear.

In summary, the message was that there is a clear and exciting future for webcasting from CERN for the professional HEP market, BUT, it is important to recognise how to use it most effectively and not to get carried away into thinking that CERN is suddenly going to hit the bigtime with the general public by putting on expensive shows.

Emma Sanders, responsible for Microcosm, sent the following invitation to the delegates:

Having started two years ago, the OR Web Pages have been organised to give a view by country. With this way of looking at all our OR information, there is no easy way to include experiments or other projects which involve several countries. MD showed a proposed new presentation of the OR Web. In this new structure, information will be structured also by subject, so that we can give access to "teaching resources" across all countries.

RM suggested a "What's New" button on the front page which would "flash" only when there is significant new information available on the web site. CS suggested to change the name of OR as it has no meaning for people.

The question concerning the production of the OR poster was raised again. NT would like a new poster, like the old one but with Bulgaria present and with all the Greek Islands. He would like a space to be left for individual customisation -like the link to the National Home page for instance.

Members have been encouraged to give more information about themselves in order to make the OR members page more useful and interesting. In particular, members are encouraged strongly to put up on the web any material which they have produced and which could be re-used by others..