The Eight Conference of the Centro Fermi projects, devoted to the Extreme Energy Events – Science in the Schools- experiment, took place from 6th to 8th December 2017 at the “Ettore Majorana” Center and Foundation for Scientific Culture at Erice. 150 students, from 45 high schools in Italy, gathered to talk about cosmic rays, presented the results of the activities performed locally, attended masterclasses about the use of the EEE data, and listened to lectures on statistics and gravitational waves. It was a full immersion of two days, taking place in the wonderful facilities of the Center, which put in direct contact school students and teachers with the project researches, giving the occasion to exchange information and plan together the activities for the future.
The students had the possibility to put in practice what they have learnt by performing a direct measure of the cosmic ray flux using the Cosmic Boxes, small portable particle detectors, assembled for the occasion by the EEE researchers. They wandered in the small streets of the historical center of Erice, moving later to visit the wonderful temple at Segesta and in the afternoon of the same day the marina drive of Castellammare del Golfo, bringing with them their small detectors, to measure the cosmic rays flux at different altitudes. The results obtained have been put together and discussed the last day of the meeting, and will be the subject of a forthcoming paper on the Giornale di Fisica.
The students left Erice bringing with them an unforgettable experience and a renovated enthusiasm to continue what they are doing at the home institutes, taking care of the instrumentations and collecting data for the experiment. One more opportunity to live, along their adventure in the exciting world of physics research.