On Friday 20 March 2015, 24 secondary school students from around Ireland attended the International Particle Physics Masterclasses at Maynooth University. This gave them the opportunity to get first hand experience of the world of particle physics, analysing real data from the Large Hadron Collider and sharing their results with students in other countries.
In the morning, they got an introduction with two lectures on the world of quarks, leptons and the forces of nature, and on particle physics experiments and the "Little Bang". During the break between the lectures, they also got a chance to see the solar eclipse, as the clouds that had been hanging thick over Maynooth earlier in the morning, parted just in time.
After lunch, the students got to work on their own in the computer lab with analysing data from the ALICE experiment at CERN, looking for signatures of a new state of matter that last existed during the Big Bang: the quark-gluon plasma. The day ended with a video conference where they discussed their results and other issues that arose with fellow students from France, Germany and Italy, and with the moderators at CERN.
The event was also covered in the Antimatter blog by Cormac O'Raifeartaigh, who came up for the day.