Hands-on activities in experimental high-energy physics for attraction and motivation to engineering careers

Abstract

The Brazilian economy has experienced a considerable growth in the last decade, and the demand for engineers has increased significantly as a direct consequence. In order to deal with this novel scenario, it is important to attract new students to engineering and technology careers and also to motivate the current students to finish their undergraduate courses. It was observed that the overall interest for high-energy physics had recently increased, mainly due to the large media exposure of the modern experiments and their discoveries, including the Higgs boson. This work presents the results obtained in an educational project, which was aimed to include students in hands-on research activities related to high-energy physics experiments, in order to augment their interest in engineering and technology. Students from both the first-years of undergraduate engineering courses (from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil) and secondary/high-school courses (from the Federal Institute for Science, Education and Technology of Bahia, Brazil) were selected to participate in experimental activities within a research group composed mainly of master students and senior researchers. As a result, it was observed that the involved students increased their technical knowledge and became more motivated to pursue advanced studies in engineering, technology and related areas.