Hands on CERN: an education project on the Internet using real high energy particle collisions

An educational project primarily aimed at teachers and 15 to 18 year- old students describing the essential features of a modern high energy physics experiment has been created. The whole education package is available on the Internet. It gives a detailed description of the physics processes involved and the Standard Model of Microcosm. Real particle collisions produced with the facilities at the European particle physics laboratory (CERN) are displayed using the platform-independent programming language Java, enabling interaction with the user. The project has been used by several groups of teachers and students, and has increased their knowledge of, and interest in, particle physics. This project complements the traditional physics education and introduces students to contemporary fundamental physics. (7 refs).