All posts by Sascha

More LEGO updates

Bergen, Norway, Outreach, Physics

PhysicsWorld

A lot of LEGO related things happened within the past days/weeks :)

I just came back from my trip to Bergen/Norway, where – besides taking some holidays – I spent a couple of days building yet another ATLAS LEGO model.
Only this time, I was only observing a bunch of  kids (up to ten at a time) doing the actual construction of both the large and the small model. The whole thing was organised as part of the biannual meeting of the Norwegian Physics Society, which also invited me to give a plenary talk about outreach with plastic bricks, and my new Build Your Own Particle Detector programme. It was great fun, everybody learned something and I’ll certainly do it again … Thanks to the Bergen people for inviting me :)

Yesterday, I found the new issue of PhysicsWorld at the institute, which features yet another nice little article about the models and their success in the LEGO Cuusoo programme.

Today, I could convince LEGO to support my Build Your Own Particle Detector programme with a few more kilos of LEGO bricks, which we will certainly need for the CERN Open Days in late September.
Speaking of those, I finally will get my own 54 square meters tent again. Which will be packed if the expected number of visitors is actually true :)

Last but not least, we’ll do the same thing for Kulturnatten in Copenhagen, 11 October 2013.

 

Honour & Glory – UEFA Women’s Championship

Football, Honour & Glory

The tournament itself is over and so is the Honour & Glory competition.

This time we had twelve participants and I cannot say I don’t like the final result ;)
Congratulations to Craig and Kristian (and the random numbers) for the places!
Along with loads of Honour & Glory, the prizes will be handed over soon!

Thanks everyone for taking part! See you for the next event (probably FIFA World Cup 2014)!

 

betting-matchboard

betting-scoreboard

B.Y.O.P.D.

CERN, Niels Bohr Institue, Outreach

Build Your Own Particle Detector

During the preparation for the CERN Open Days, I came up with the new official logo!
As we will have some posters going along with the LEGO model and the construction competition, I though it would be a great idea to have one.
Let me know what you think of the design … I like it ;)

B.Y.O.P.D.

Thanks to the guy(s) from toddle.com for the SVG LEGO man template.

Golden Gate

Physics, San Francisco, United States

It’s already the second week in San Francisco now. Lot’s of things to see and do, so I did not manage to write something earlier.

First thing that caused quite some excitement was the fact that I arrived last Monday, while my baggage did not. So I actually had to waste some time on shopping. Some might not call this a waste of time, but you know me.

Besides the shopping tour, I also did quite some sightseeing and walking in SF, including a walking tour over the Golden Gate Bridge and a night tour of Alcatraz. On Wednesday I went to the SF NerdNite at Rickshaw Stop to see a couple science/tech inspired talks given by more or less known figures in the bay area.

On Friday, my baggage finally made it to town. Just in time for a little hiking weekend in Yosemite.
After a four hour drive to the park on Saturday morning, we went on a very nice 15 km hike onto the Mono Pass and the Sardine/Mono Lakes overlook. Coming back to camping ground, some grilled sausages and corn we already waiting for us (greetz Alex, Tobias, Wilko). After a nice and rich breakfast by Tenaya Lake, we made another more relaxing 8km hike, took a dive in one of the small and very cold lakes just outside the park and made us on our way back to SF.

Back in town, I had to realise that not only my first option to print my poster had failed. Also the backup failed, so I had to call and run/cycle through town to get my poster printed on Monday. It was done an hour before the session started.

Talking about the session/conference. It was nice start yesterday, not only on the physics side. In fact, the non-physics part was even more exciting. Besides a few small technical difficulties, we had a power cut interrupting the session, that apparently affected about 300k people in SF. But thanks to the diesel generators in the building the show could go on.

Now I gotta go back to the conference …

And for those that always care, don’t be jealous about the weather … it’s raining; and I’ll be uploading some pictures soon.

It is over – first step in the LEGO review

CERN, Outreach

After only about 16 days and with the help of many people I managed to pass the threshold of the required 10,000 supporter yesterday. I tracked the number of supporters over time shown in the plot below and I have to say it’s quite an impressive curve :)

But it’s only the beginning, now starts the real interesting part, the LEGO review. Even though the idea made the first step, it’s not yet certain that the model will be available as a product in the end. So let’s cross fingers and see what LEGO has to say about it. In fact, LEGO just posted their first official comment on the project on the ATLAS mini model Cuusoo page.

At this point I also wanna thank a few supporters that spread word and helped in this success. Most importantly that is Elise from I fucking love science, but there were also Torben at Ingeniøren, the guys from symmetry magazine and University Post, and many many more.