International Masterclasses: Particle Physics for High School Students and Teachers

Each year, over 10,000 students participate in International Masterclasses. Masterclasses are day-long events held at universities and laboratories worldwide. The students are "particle physicists for a day", learning about the Standard Model, touring laboratory facilities, and analyzing authentic data from experiments in the Large Hadron Collider and in the neutrino beamline at Fermilab. Students perform visual analysis of event displays and pool results to build statistics with guidance from physicists. In many masterclasses, particularly in the United States, teachers work with the physicists to assist students. Teachers who do this become adept at understanding the data and grow professionally. At the end of each masterclass day, groups who have made the same measurement meet online in videoconferences moderated by scientists at CERN or Fermilab. International Masterclasses are an effective way to excite interest in physics among young people and to promote physics in high schools.