Bringing the LHC and ATLAS to a regional planetarium

TL;DR

This paper describes an outreach initiative at Michigan State University that uses short multimedia clips created by students to educate the public about the LHC and ATLAS experiment at a planetarium.

Contribution

It introduces a novel educational outreach approach combining student-produced multimedia content with planetarium presentations to enhance public understanding of particle physics.

Findings

Increased public engagement with particle physics topics.

Effective use of multimedia clips for science communication.

Collaborative student involvement in outreach efforts.

Abstract

An outreach effort has started at Michigan State University to bring particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider, and the ATLAS experiment to a general audience at the Abrams planetarium on the MSU campus. A team of undergraduate students majoring in physics, communications arts & sciences, and journalism are putting together short clips about ATLAS and the LHC to be shown at the planetarium.