Girls’ Day at European XFEL
Physics and engineering have long since ceased to be exclusive male domains. On 25 April, this fact was underlined at European XFEL, where 10 girls between 11 and 15 years old spent a day.
After being welcomed by Administrative Director Claudia Burger, they were introduced to some of the goals and key data of European XFEL in a short presentation. The girls then explored the Hamburg underground. Passing subterranean European XFEL laboratories, they reached the underground tunnel of DESY’s HERA particle accelerator, which runs 6336 metres in a circle from the DESY campus beneath the nearby Volkspark and the Hamburg districts of Lurup and Bahrenfeld. Here, the girls were able see what a particle accelerator looks like and how it works. Two or three years from now, the European XFEL accelerator tunnel will look quite similar, but the tunnel will be straight rather than circular, and the accelerator will be more modern.
After the tour, it was the girls’ turn. Instructed by European XFEL scientists and engineers—all women—they conducted a number of exciting vacuum experiments and learned that vacuum will also play an important role at the future European XFEL. No matter what the task—rupturing a plastic foil and causing a big bang, making a wire glow, or comparing the fall velocity of a small metal ball and feather with and without vacuum—the girls proved to be enthusiastic researchers who repeated most of the experiments several times.
