Mix your own slime and conduct experiments to find out how slimy detectors can help us to make invisible things visible.

A lot of phenomena scientists at CERN investigate are invisible! For example, elementary particles cannot be seen with the naked eye, and properties such as their mass, energy and electric charge can only be determined with the help of powerful research tools like particle detectors. In particle detectors, special materials make invisible properties of particles visible.

We all encounter the invisible on a daily basis. For instance, temperature is invisible to our eyes; we can only feel temperature differences with our skin. In fact, we use different types of detectors (like thermometers or infrared cameras) to make temperature differences visible. A fun way to detect temperature differences is to use thermochromic slime, a type of slime that changes colour when the temperature changes. 

In this workshop, participants mix thermochromic slime and conduct experiments to find out how it responds to different stimuli, such as heat, cold or touch. They apply their knowledge and use infrared cameras to make invisible temperature differences visible.