At the 28^th and 29^th of September, CERN organized two open days (11 hours duration each). This large event was attended by 70,000 people! About 20,000 visitors went underground to watch the experiments in the cavern and the tunnel, but the vast majority stayed on the surface and visited the various project experiment booths.

ATLAS, which was at a very central position next to the Globe, had a number of “tents” where visitors were able to go around. They got their picture taken, talked to physicists about the Higgs, bought souvenirs, had a kids’ corner with a Lego competition etc.

Go-Lab and The Discover the COSMOS projects had their own presentation place, where six large screen PCs and 4 iPads were set-up and had some of projects’ labs running for demonstration to the public. The labs included the LHC game and CERNland for smaller kids, as well as HYPATIA, MINERVA and Collider for the ATLAS event display and analysis.

The booth was organized by the ATLAS outreach group together with IASA and EPFL teams. Besides hands-on online labs demonstrations, a big project poster was displayed and more than 2,000 leaflets in both English and French were distributed to the visitors.

Article by Christine Kourkoumelis (IASA)