Sunday, March 7, 2010

Women's Day at CERN

March 8th is international women's day, and the people at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the largest particle accelerator in the world, are celebrating. This is a really worth while activity since women are underrepresented in the scientific community and inspiring events are one way to make science interesting for girls of all ages, especially the young ones.

Materials can be found here.

Mein Schatz will be one of the people in the control room for one shift. One of the activities was to have almost all the people in the control rooms be women, and I think the population will be ~80% or more women.

This is not an activity to be done because somehow women are inferior and that is why they are low in the population; believe me, in my physics department most of the girls done a better job than me it seems. These events are needed because social pressures make the world of math and science less appealing to the fairer sex. Science is not just a man's job, and that is the point. If such things can inspire girls, to let them know that there is nothing awkward about being a scientist, that is all that is needed for them to succeed.

Go Women's Day!

No comments: