The Spanish National Particle Physics, Astroparticles and Nuclear Physics Centre, CPAN, in conjunction with the Fundación General CSIC, has awarded the prizes to the winners of its second science communication competition, an initiative that was launched last year to recognise the production of popular science materials the areas of physics the centre deals with.
A total of 47 entries were received from authors in Spain and Latin America. Entries are divided into five categories: articles, websites, videos, experiments and work published in the media. The prize-winners include a video explaining dark matter and energy; websites and texts with the latest news from the LHC; an experiment to create a cosmic-ray detector, intended for use in secondary schools; and an articles on the OPERA experiment’s possible discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos.
In this edition of the competition (the second), the winner in the popular science articles category was «El oscuro enigma» [The dark enigma], by Begoña Ascaso and Rosalía Cid, whose background is in astrophysics and physics. The runner up was «Cómo (y para qué) descubrir la partícula de Higgs» [How to discover the Higgs boson (and why)], by Hugo Ruiz, a researcher at the Cosmos Sciences Institute, University of the Barcelona.
The prize winner in the web sites and blogs category was a blog called «La ciencia de la mula Francis/Francis (th)E mule Science´s News», by Francisco R. Villatoro, a lecturer at the University of Málaga.
The runner up was «Acercándonos al LHC» [Getting closer to the LHC], by Ramón Cid, and secondary school teacher, and Xabier Cid, a researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela. The winning video was «El Universo invisible» [The invisible Universe], by Javier Díez. The runner up in this category was «Jem Euso – The thin blue line», by Daniel Vega.
The winner in the experiments category was «Física de partículas en el instituto: un paso más allá» [Particle physics in the secondary school: one step further], by Francisco Barradas. There were two runners up in this category: «Desviando partículas en un viejo monitor» [Bending the path of particles in an old monitor], by Alberto Pérez García, a secondary school teacher, and «Construcción de un Van der Graaff casero» [Building a Van der Graaf generator at home], by Ángel Jesús Romero Serrano and Inmaculada Díaz Francés, researchers at the National Accelerators Centres (CNA) and the University of Seville, respectively.
Last, but not least, the prize for works published in the media went to the article «Ópera del neutrino en dos actos» [Neutron opera in two acts] written by José Edelstein Glaubach and Andrés Gomberoff, researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela and UNAB, respectively, and published in the Chilean weekly newspaper Qué Pasa.
The award ceremony took place during the 3rd CPAN open days held from 2-4 November, in Barcelona.
More information at:
www.i‐cpan.es
http://www.i‐cpan.es/concurso2/ganadores.php
