CCH student joins world’s best at physics conference
Catholic Central High School student Marin Schultz has been having the time of his life pondering the mysteries of the cosmos at the prestigious Perimeter Institute’s International Summer School for Young Physicists (ISSYP) in Waterloo, Ont., these past two weeks. Schultz is one of very few students chosen from Canada and around the world to attend this year’s ISSYP.
“The Perimeter Institute is Canada’s leading institute for theoretical physics,” explains Schultz. “It is a collection of the brightest physicists in Canada and frankly from all over the world. They have people coming to study here all the time from everywhere. It is really an incredible environment for people to collaborate and create science.”
Schultz, who is entering Grade 12 this year, says he will definitely be going into a physics program when he enters university in 2019, but he just doesn’t know where. The ISSYP has shown him possibilities in physics, he says, he had not considered before as he takes part in intensive discussions and mentoring sessions with some of the world’s leading physicists on a daily basis.
“I think one of the incredible things about physics is the more you learn, the more you realize about yourself and the world around you,” he states.
As for his favourite part of the ISSYP experience so far? How about taking a page right out of a science fiction book?
“Probably one of my favourite things was actually when we got to go to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory,” says Schultz. “So we took a bus ride over and we got to see this underground lab. We actually took a mine shaft (elevator) two kilometres underground, and you get to this underground clean room. And we got a tour of one of the biggest and deepest neutrino observatories in the world and all the various experiments they are doing there to measure both dark matter and neutrinos. It was pretty incredible to be there.”
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