Category Archives: Cities

Origins 2013 and CERN Open Days

CERN, Geneva, Outreach

What a weekend, what a weekend! I am dead, but it was great!

After driving the institute car from Copenhagen to Berlin (Monday), from Berlin to Frankfurt (Tuesday) and from Frankfurt to Geneva (Wednesday); I finally arrived at CERN on Wednesday afternoon last week. It took two and a half days, until Friday evening, to set up an amazing tent for the CERN Open Days 2013. On about 50 square meters I had three large tables covered by roughly 30 kilograms of random LEGO pieces, both ATLAS LEGO models on display, various posters about the models and physics on the walls and an amazing 2×2 46″ video wall showing the model-vs-detector-timelapse video and more.

2013-09-27 16-58-18 CERN Open Days Panorama

Friday evening I took part in the Origins 2013 physics speed dating event. While all the people that had originally booked a date with me did not show up (the central organisation made it slightly difficult to find the right tent), I had some nice ad hoc speed dates with various people on all sorts of topics. I guess, the idea was quite nice, maybe the implementation was not entirely perfect. Maybe next time.

Finally on Saturday, after another night of only little sleep, the Open Days started. Apparently CERN had between 70,000 and 80,000 visitors with 20,000 people visiting the underground experiments (preliminary numbers), such as ATLAS or CMS. I had thousands of people passing through the tent and 300 participants for the Build Your Own Particle Detector competition. In between all the LEGO activities, I luckily also managed to give three tours to ATLAS, where on one of those I was wearing a helmet camera. So if all worked well, I might have a video of the tour soon.

After a long day, I spent the Sunday exploring various CERN sites together with my sister, Richard and Andrea (greetz). I had managed to book a tour for the ALICE experiment and in addition we got tickets for both ATLAS and LHCb as well. We probably could have managed to see CMS as well and repeat our 2008 Open Days trip, but we were simply too exhausted to continue.

Now I just want to sleep …

Laurent @ Culture Box

Copenhagen, Music

It’s been several years after his last appearance at Culture Box in Copenhagen and it’s been several months since I managed to see Laurent last time. So about time for both of us ;)

And what should I say … it was great!
After three hours of warm-up by the residents, Laurent started at 2am and continued until 6am.

Certainly long enough to make my knees hurt for the rest of the weekend. The good kinda pain though ;)

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.

 

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.

Passeport Big Bang

CERN, Geneva, Outreach, Physics

It took me some time, but finally I managed to write a few words about the fantastic event I took part last Sunday.

I was asked to run one of the stations during the inauguration event of the new Passeport Big Bang interactive circuit at CERN. The circuit is a permanent installation and collection of cycling tours to explore the LHC and the area its situated. During the inauguration event there were a variety of stations set up the inform, educate and entertain the public. One of the stations happened to be my idea of a “Build your own particle detector” competition.

Following the spirit of the ATLAS model I made back in 2011, the task was of course to build the model in LEGO. Putting together pieces bought by the high energy physics group at the Niels Bohr Institute, the CERN outreach group and myself, I managed to get about 15 kg of LEGO. Stuffed in my tracking backpack, I took them from Copenhagen to Geneva and back as my only travel luggage. CERN organised a nice and big tent with plenty of room  for heaps of people and kilos of LEGO. With the help of the ATLAS event management team, I managed to fill up the tent with a few posters, my large ATLAS model and a nice big 42″ screen showing the model construction time-lapse movie.

Even though we were certainly lacking a few things in organisation and were certainly not enough people (thanks to my helper Natalie), the idea worked out extremely well.
We estimated the number of children passing through and playing with LEGO in the hundreds, with 81 models handed in for the competition. Again, thanks to the people setting up the ATLAS tent next to mine, I also had some giveaway for every contestant, to bridge the waiting time for a decision of the grand jury.

You can see some pictures of the event and all the models in the competition at http://passeport.mehlhase.info/.

As the event was quite a success, I’ll probably set up a similar event during the CERN Open Days on September 28th/29th and at Kulturnatten in Copenhagen on October 11th.