A GROUP of Kelly College lower sixth form students visited Bristol University to take part in a particle physics master class recently.

The group was among around 100 students who took the chance to learn about recent developments in high energy particles and astrophysics. 

Prof Nick Brook, head of the School of Physics, welcomed the students and described the graduate courses and opportunities at Bristol University. He began the master class with a lecture which described how tiny particles behave and combine to make up the universe, and how the Higgs Boson fits into this theory. 

A highlight of the day was analysing data from CERN, using the High Performance Computing Centre, one of the UK's most powerful research computers.

Other activities included designing and delivering a pitch for the next particle accelerator and detector, and other lectures covered high performance computing and a hundred years of cosmic radiation research.  All the lectures and activities were given by staff and postgraduates, who are working on experiments based at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.