Where do the highest-energy cosmic rays come from? Where did all the science students go? In the Netherlands, where physics undergraduate numbers are taking a dive, experimentally addressing the first question is hopefully countering the problem reflected in the second, thanks to an imaginative scheme in which universities and schools are collaborating in particle astrophysics.

The “high-school project on astrophysics research with cosmics” (HISPARC) seems to fire up the enthusiasm of school students in a way that few other schemes have done. And, encouragingly, this is just one entry among several in a competition, run by the Altran Foundation, that this year focused on innovative school projects. Announced this week as the winner, its technology and approach will within a year become accessible to schools in other countries.

With its first detectors set up in 2002, HISPARC focuses on the air showers produced when cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere, each stimulating a cascade of secondary particles travelling in the same direction. The higher the energy, the larger the area at the ground over which secondaries arrive. At the highest energies seen so far — more than 1019 electronvolts — the secondaries can be detected by an array of detectors spread over 100 km2 or so. Such showers caused consternation when detectors discovered them in the early 1990s; the numbers of ‘primaries’ hitting the atmosphere had been expected to tail off below such energies.

Initiated by physicists at the University of Nijmegen, a cluster of schools was chosen to host a network of detectors of these extraordinary events. The detectors — more sensitive than those that made the original observations — consist of a pair of plastic scintillators that detect light given off as secondary particles arrive. Events that trigger coincident bursts of light in both detectors, timed with the help of the Global Positioning System, register within the network. Now tens of such detectors are being developed in schools in collaboration with several Dutch universities (see http://www.hisparc.nl/).

A key to the project's motivational success, according to its coordinators, is that the schools become stakeholders by working with researchers in constructing the detectors. Importantly, those who are motivated include an even balance of both sexes and a healthy representation across ethnic groups. And that motivation could grow further as the networks develop into a system capable of having a scientific impact, pursuing rare events for which only a few detectors exist.

The project's impact will be magnified by its success in winning this year's Altran Foundation for Innovation Award. The prize money of €16,000 (US$19,000) will no doubt be useful. But much more useful will be an unusual and commendable feature of the awards, whereby the foundation, based in a major consultancy organization (see http://www.fondation-altran.org), will also provide €1 million of support-in-kind over 12 months. This support is intended to ensure that the technology and software become cheaper to build and that the project spreads to schools in other countries.

The short-listed entries show that physics is not the only area in which imagination is being deployed to involve schoolchildren in the ideas of science. Measurements of climate change, the development of hands-on mathematical instruments modelled on historical originals, and the use of easy-to-make fuel cells are among the other projects dreamt up by universities and museums, and already in action. At a time when everyone is agonizing about the dearth of interest in science among schoolchildren, such projects should not only be noticed but also nurtured. Wherever science students have been disappearing to, here's hoping that these schemes can encourage some of them back.