Under the auspices of the European Council for Nuclear Research, better known by the acronym CERN, and the international group for the promotion of science, an international physics masterclass was held at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Čačak on Friday, March 22, which was attended by approximately 40 high school students from Čačak and the region. 

 

 

Jelena Jovićević, PhD, from the Institute of Physics in Belgrade, pointed out that the idea of this program is to give students the opportunity to come to local institutions and learn about research at CERN, become physicists for a day and see how space and matter mysteries are revealed, how data from experiments at CERN is analyzed. They have the opportunity to participate in the analysis of scientific data in a simple way.

 

 

The international physics masterclass has been organized in Serbia since 2009 at scientific institutions in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš and Kragujevac. 23 countries are members of CERN, and the organization has cooperation agreements with 38 countries. It has been present in Serbia for 20 years.

The Faculty of Technical Sciences in Čačak is well equipped to organize an event of this kind, which is being realized this year for the first time in our city. Prof. Dr Nebojša Mitrović, vice dean for science and international cooperation, said that in the first part of the day, students had the opportunity to listen to lectures, and the second part was dedicated to simulating data analysis at CERN. According to the official data of the organizers, the largest number of participants of this event in Serbia this year was present at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Čačak.

 

 

This educational and research program was implemented on the same day in over 60 countries of the world, and about 13 thousand high school students and students were involved in the promotion of physics, who helped them and guided them with experience in performing exercises. Dr Milentije Luković, assistant professor at The Faculty of Technical Sciences and one of the main organizers of the entire event, emphasized that this has been a good opportunity for very successful physics students, former participants of similar events, to help younger friends in solving physics problems. Dr Luković managed to gather the students from various secondary schools and invited physics students came with great pleasure. One of them, very talented and successful in the field of physics, Zlatan Vasović, former secondary school student of the generation, passed on his knowledge to current secondary school students, trying to bring them the laws of physics even closer. Milena Dukić, Anđela Bešir, Jovana Kostić and Mirjana Boričić were equally successful students in this activity.

Young participants of the event, already interested in physics, had the opportunity to expand their knowledge. They emphasized that they applied because they were intrigued by the physics of elementary particles. They believe that the event is a good opportunity for the town and young people to gain new knowledge and experience and thus get closer to large institutes. The selection of participants was made based on their results in competitions and participation in various projects related to physics.

At the end of the official part of the successful day, the students, just like at CERN, connected via video link with other institutions around the world and discussed their combined data.

After that, the dean of the Faculty of Technical Sciences, Prof. Dr Danijela Milošević, awarded the certificates, congratulated all the students on successfully attending this prestigious program and actively participating in an extremely important scientific event, and emphasized that she is convinced that many of those present will continue to successfully engage in scientific wok in the field of physics.