it's ib physics!

from this month’s research, i have touched upon topics that i previously knew virtually nothing about, but was interested in. this is an effective method of learning individually, and becoming informed on topics that i am interested in but have not been taught in the classroom. writing on this topic has also affirmed a deeper understanding, as i want to make sure i understand fully what i am writing about. one of the most important things about learning is to stay interested in your area of study, and this project has allowed us to redevelop our stance and interest in physics.

international mindedness in students can be developed by allowing them to communicate and collaborate with people of vastly different backgrounds. this can lead them to gain the skills to put themselves in others’ mindsets, once they understand the different circumstances that others are in. thinking on an international level is to make the best possible decisions to benefit yourself and as many others as possible, such that we can improve the world we are living in.

it was then established that all electrons were identical, confirming the existence of identical particles. under the spin-statistics theorem, all particles in the universe were determined to be either a boson or a fermion. the forces governing the distinction between these two kinds of elementary particles led the the proposal of quantum field theory, nowadays used to construct physical models of subatomic particles.

//video source: CERN

the large hadron collider, built by the european organization for nuclear research, is located beneath the france-switzerland border. it is a high energy particle accelerator, and the largest machine in the world. it consists of two adjacent parallel beamlines, used to fire proton beams or heavy ion beams. the beams collide at four points in the tunnel, and 7 detectors have been constructed in the tunnel for various kinds of data collection. the collider is used to explore currently unknown questions in physics, including the fundamentals of how elementary particles interact with each other and thus how our universe is structured. one of the biggest questions it has been involved in is the investigation of the nature of dark matter, which is the material filling the seemingly empty void of space.