"Accelerators for humanity"

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Closed

STFC
STFC
STFC
STFC
STFC

£191,410

May 17, 2016

Nov. 17, 2016

Particle accelerators have many varied applications and their uses in medicine and industry are transforming lives. Yet, whilst the discovery of the Higgs Boson and CERN's Large Hadron Collider captured the public's imagination like few other recent scientific developments, the public remains largely unaware that accelerators have any uses apart from particle physics research.

'Accelerators for Humanity' will address this gap by curating a programme cutting across live events and digital video resources. The project will capture the dedication of particle accelerator researchers in STFC-funded facilities and highlight the varied ways in which their work is impacting on our lives in areas such as medicine, food safety and nuclear power. It will utilise the experience of the Royal Institution (Ri) Channel video production team, and the organisation's 200-year expertise in communicating in-depth science to the public. For example, the STFC-funded 'Ri Crystallography' collection to date has been viewed nearly 400k times.

The project will include a public talk by STFC-funded Dr Suzie Sheehy and a debate featuring a panel of particle accelerator researchers. In her talk Dr Sheehy will discuss her work designing accelerators and their potential future applications in areas such as the treatment of cancer. The panel debate will focus on the challenges faced by researchers designing today's accelerators for use in answering tomorrow's research questions. Both these events will be filmed and available online as part of a permanent 'Accelerators for Humanity' digital resource.

The Ri will also produce a series of short films exploring the human stories of particle accelerator researchers working in STFC-funded facilities, an animation exploring the challenges faced in building accelerators, a science demo video explaining the principle by which accelerators trap and transport charged particles, and an interactive video providing a 360 degree view inside an accelerator.

The films will be developed for a general audience and will be released under a Creative Commons license. They will be hosted on the Ri's YouTube channel, which currently has around 200,000 subscribers, as well as being seeded on other media and educational websites. Public discussion through YouTube comments will be encouraged, and this online discussion will be supplemented by social media discussions including an Ri Twitter quiz.

A project hub will be created on the Ri's own video website, the Ri Channel, which will act as home to the permanent digital resources. The resources will be distributed to teachers and educators and a project wrap-up event will help raise awareness of the project amongst science communicators and those within the UK particle accelerator research community.