Groups of A Level students are invited, with support from their teachers and particle physicists at Birmingham, to prepare a short presentation relating to particle physics, and then deliver it to another group of students, either from their own school or college, or to an invited audience from other institutions.

The presentations will then be judged by a team from the University – Particle Physics experts and teachers – and the best six schools will be invited to a GRAND FINAL at the University – provisionally scheduled for April 24th 2008 -where they will repeat their presentations in front of an invited audience, the team of judges and other competitors.

TWO major cash prizes of £1000 and FOUR minor cash prizes of £500 awarded on the day are to be used to help finance visits to CERN in 2008-9. Please see enclosed information sheet for details of competition rules and procedures.

• There must be at least two students in the competing team, but there can be more (AS or A2 students or mixed AS & A2 students), and each team member must make a recognisable contribution to the presentation.
• The presentation must last 20 minutes give or take 2 minutes, including any demonstrations and/or audience participation.
• The presentation must include a Powerpoint element. Feel free to include demonstrations, audience participation, drama, etc., as you deem fit!
• We would expect your audience to be at least 50 students.
• You will need to send in
  • a CD with copies of your Powerpoint presentation
  • details of the audience/team supporters – ages, schools, colleges, etc.
  • details of any demonstrations and other presentation aids used. Kindly send in a copy of your presentation on CD/DVD/videotape on or before March 14th 2008.
• Your audience can be either A Level students / Y11 students or Pre GCSE students (Y7-9)

• Your presentation should be on one of the following topics:
  • What are we all made of ? Atoms – Quarks - ?
  • Particle Accelerators – How do they work? and what happens when particles collide?
  • Particle Detectors – What are they? How do they detect particles?
  • World Wide Web to World Wide computing Grid – How far has computing come? And why do we need so many computers?
  • Searching for New Particles – What are Higgs Bosons? Why may they be important?
  • Medical Applications of Particle Accelerators – What are they?
  • Recreating the Early Universe at the LHC - What do we mean? How do we do it? And what are we looking for?