Science: Trip to Cern awaits young prize winners

All Europe will be celebrating its scientific heritage next month, in a series of festivities sponsored by the European Community to mark European Week for Scientific Culture. The Independent, in conjunction with the British Association for the Advancement of Science, will participate by running a competition, aimed at 14- to 18-year-olds, starting on the science page on 22 November.

Among the prizes will be trips to Cern, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, and the international astronomical observatory on the Canary Islands.

Last week's teaser, designed to whet readers' appetites and introduce the style of the competition, was to identify the scientist in the official logo. The answer is Archimedes, who is credited with the belief that, given a fixed point and a sufficiently long lever, he could move the world. During the siege of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed by a Roman legionary whom he had rebuked for treading on the geometrical figures he had drawn in the sand.