Centaurus High School students proposed starting a physics club in 2018 to work on developing a project for an international particle physics competition organized by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
In 2019, the seven-member team at the Lafayette school was “shortlisted” as a runner-up in the competition, which meant their proposal for an experiment on made it to the top 10%. Club members continued to work on refining the project and, in 2024, a second Centaurus team’s proposal was again shortlisted — one of three shortlisted from schools in the United States.
In the fall, current physics club students decided to make a third attempt, simplifying the proposal in response to feedback from the judges in 2024 who questioned whether it was achievable.
This time, the team was one of five that made it off the shortlist to win the grand prize: a trip to Europe to work with scientists to run their experiment in a professional lab. Along with Centaurus, teams from the United Kingdom, Turkey, India and Bangladesh won the grand prize this year.
“For the past seven years, students have been slowly refining our idea and simplifying it,” said team member Ryan Griffith, who graduated from Centaurus in May and will attend the University of Colorado Boulder to study computer science.
Centaurus’ project was chosen from more than 700 submissions from 89 countries. The submissions were whittled down to a short list of 50 particularly promising experiments, which were then considered by a committee of scientists.
Dylan Stevens, a rising Centaurus junior, said the announcement that they won came as a shock. They thought they were meeting virtually with the selection group to answer questions about their proposal. Instead, they learned they won.
“We expected them to grill us,” he said. “It was so surprising.”
The 10 students on the Centaurus team, who have dubbed themselves “Team Centauri Stars,” will travel in August to a lab in Hamburg, Germany, to carry out their experiment using particle accelerators. The other students on the team are Natalie Summers, Vibeke Andersen, Ocean Reamer, Liam Bonnell, Jack Mueller-Scott, Noah Keene, Levi Wicar and Merlina Rojas.
They plan to use silicon photomultipliers to determine the angle of Cherenkov radiation in a glass bar, with the help of the scientists at the DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) Research Centre.
Light slows down in transparent materials such as water or glass, and Cherenkov radiation occurs when charged particles move faster through the material than light does, Becker said. This generates a shock wave, similar to a sonic boom, creating a blue cone of light at a specific angle depending on the speed of the charged particles.
Light can also totally internally reflect inside glass, she said, so the team will use a rectangular glass bar to trap the Cherenkov light and preserve the angle. At the end of the bar, the silicon photomultipliers will detect and amplify light into a measurable electrical signal, which can be used to determine the angle of light, and therefore the speed of the charged particles. Using the speed and information about particle momentum or energy, this type of detector tracks and identifies charged particles.
The students are meeting weekly over the summer to work on the project, including recently visiting Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, where they took a tour and brainstormed with LASP scientists.
The scientists offered suggestions on constructing a dark box — “aluminum or copper tape will be your friend” — and suggested a free online tool that helps set up simulations. Becker also brought a large glass bar to the LASP visit to get advice on where to take it that could cut it to a much smaller size.
While the cost of the trip itself is covered, the team is still raising money to buy all the needed materials for the experiment before the Aug. 10 flight. To donate, go to .
“We have a very short turnaround time to get everything ready,” said Centaurus physics teacher and team coach Kimberly Becker.
All the students on the team are part of the physics club, which works on various projects and challenges each year, including a and an engineering challenge hosted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Bonnell, who graduated in May and is going to CU Boulder to study mechanical engineering, said he signed on to the particle physics project because he wanted “to create something using really high-end technology. Itap not a basic engineering challenge.”
“It feels like you’re pushing the boundaries of science,” he said. “You can test something nobody else has.”
The students said they aren’t sure if their ideas will translate into a successful experiment — and are feeling the pressure as they represent not just Centaurus but “all of North and South America.”
“Itap going to be so cool when we get to work with the real instruments at the lab,” Stevens said. “We will be happy if we can get any reading.”
But they agreed that, even if their experiment fails, the experience is the real prize.
“Itap going to be amazing no matter what,” Becker said.
