A ‘ Diamond’ experience for Haywards Heath College students

Physics students at Haywards Heath College enjoyed a fantastic visit to the UK’s largest particle accelerator recently.

The ground-breaking research at Diamond Particle Synchrotron at Harwell in Oxfordshire has seen advancements in vaccines, jet engines, archaeology and even hip implements!

This amazing opportunity to visit the facility gave STEM students a rare insight into the synchrotron, which accelerates electrons to speeds close to that of the speed of light.

These bright ‘beamlines’ are passed through a huge range of sample objects, such as nanomaterials, viruses like Covid-19 and the skull of the 2.8 million-year-old fossilized skeleton called ‘Little Foot’, as well as meteorites. This builds images of their 3D atomic structure.

More than 14,000 academic and industry researchers from across life and physical sciences use ‘Diamond’ to conduct experiments – a world-wide collaboration of scientists and engineers.

Students were absolutely amazed by their visit.

Kuziva said: “The Diamond trip was an eye-opening experience, the highlight for me was learning about crystallography.

“It really changed my perspective on studying science, especially seeing how concepts from my computer science course can be applied in physics and chemistry and how electrons moving at the speed of light can produce light that’s 10 billion times brighter than the sun. I deeply appreciate the chance to have this experience.”

Will added: “The best part of the experience was entering the particle accelerator itself and being able to view the intricacies and the mechanics of the machine up close. This has increased my interest in a possible career with CERN in the far future.”

And Nomutas reflected: “It was amazing learning how electrons are accelerated to nearly the speed of light. When those electrons are passed through different molecules, they give off different colours that uniquely identify them.”