We present a study of the structure of hadronic events recorded by the L3 detector at center-of-mass energies of 130 and 136 GeV. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5 pb −1 collected during the high energy run of 1995. The shapes of the event shape distributions and the energy dependence of their mean values are well reproduced by QCD models. From a comparison of the data with resummed O (α s 2 ) QCD calculations, we determine the strong coupling constant to be α s (133 GeV) = 0.107 ± 0.005(exp) ± 0.006(theor).
Mean values of the event shape variables.
Mean charged particle multiplicity.
The value of alpha_s from the fits to the event shape variables : thrust (THRUST), scale heavy jet mass (MH**2/S), total jet broadening (BT)and wide jet broadening (BW). The last value is combined result (COMBINED). The second systematic error is due to uncertainties in the theory.