The 4th day of the Linear Collider Workshop (LCWS) 2016 was held on December 8 at venues including Aiina on Morioka Ekinishidoori street, Morioka City. After attending sessions, researchers met with middle and high school students from within Iwate Prefecture. The researchers talked about their lives as students and the reasons they chose to study physics, emphasizing the importance of the International Linear Collider and sharing a dream without limits with the students.
35 middle and high school students from Morioka City, Hanamaki City, Kitakami City and Ichinoseki City attended the event. Professor Michael Peskins from SLAC in the United States and Professor Phillip Barrows of Oxford University in England, along with three young female researchers (Ms. Anne Schuetz, Ms. Nuria Fuster, and Ms. Talitha Bromwell), gave talks on how interesting physics is and the research they are currently performing.
After being separated into groups, the students asked simple questions about the ILC and about life as a researcher in English and Japanese. Some students also surprised the researchers with technical questions, such as about the expansion of the universe and how that relates to the Higgs particle.
Akari Kita, a second year student from Maikawa Middle School in Ichinoseki appeared excited by the young women researchers’ talks, saying “I think it’s amazing to want to find out these things. I want to broaden my potential and be interested in many things.” Morioka Fourth High School 1st year student Tatsuya Sakuyama discovered a new side of researchers, saying “I like the friendly atmosphere of holding birthday parties for each other, for example.”
Yuka Kumagaya, a second year student at Morioka First High School who has been researching about the ILC from various perspectives like city planning and the environment, asked a question about how the left-over earth from ILC construction would be dealt with. “I was grateful to find that [researchers] are mindful of the natural environment and about Iwate. I feel even more strongly that I want to be a researcher,” said Kumagaya with bright eyes.