Category Archives: Cities

Kulturnatten – Culture night in Copenhagen

CERN, Copenhagen, Niels Bohr Institue, Outreach, Physics

It was a long, but successful day yesterday!

I spent about 17 hours at the institute, but besides a bit of ‘regular’ work we managed to set up small but quite nice exhibition about particle physics, the LHC and CERN in general and ATLAS in more detail. This year we also managed to show the ATLAS LEGO model for the first time at Kulturnatten. With no surprise, quite a success! There were actually people coming specifically to see the model! :)

In addition to the little exhibition we had an extra auditorium were set up ATLAS Virtual Visits for the first time in Copenhagen. We had in total four 30 minutes live connections to the ATLAS Control Room in Geneva, Switzerland. There were between twenty to thirty people in each session, that sometimes (actually quite a few of them) stayed longer than an hour to ask questions and listen both to the guys we had at CERN and us locally.

I might at some point also post a link to the recording of the sessions here. [link]

To round of the day, and to make yet a bit longer, we used our webcast hardware to set up a remote viewing room for Holger Beck‘s late night lectures, which were otherwise heavily ‘over-booked’.

So it was a long day, but I’m quite satisfied with what we managed to do!

Man on a mission …

CERN, Geneva, Outreach

… and the mission were some special shifts at point one, just above the ATLAS control room. Unfortunately the task did not give any credits within ATLAS, but to build my third ATLAS model in plastic bricks isn’t too bad of a job either.

To be more precise it’s actually a reassembly of the second model I build in Copenhagen, though had to take apart (at least in sections) before shipping it to CERN. Another specialty of this build is the fact that – and LEGO enthusiasts please excuse – I decided to use glue this time. Since this model, after being shown at researchers night this weekend, s supposed to be driven by car to Montreux for the ATLAS week during the next five days.

So I ended up sitting in a room with twenty computers, no window to open and the smell of glue in the air … Yeah!

Anyways, once again the model tuned out nice and hopefully it will survive the trip.  I guess I’ll know tomorrow …

In the meantime I heard that also CMS managed to build a plastic brick version of their detector … I’ll post more details once I have them! Also that means LHCb will be my next mission ;)

Just Croozing and more

Copenhagen, Erik, Family & Friends

Puh … it’s been quite some time since the last post. Sorry … but I wasn’t really in the mood or didn’t have the time to write something.
But since a lot of things happend after I came back from China (last post), I’ll try to make for the silence now.

The major breakthroughs since then were probably the facts that Erik: has started eating meat (though blended), can sit by himself, got a bicycle trailer and got his third tooth. I for myself have started my parental leave in part time, meaning I am only working on three days per week and stay home the other two/four. And last but not least, the ATLAS model is becoming an even bigger success!

The bicycle trailer – a Croozer Kids for 2 btw. – was kind of a tough decision that took quite a few days/weeks to be made. After browsing a few tests and comparisons of various bike trailers and seats, we actually got more confused than enlightened. Finally it turned out that some of the tests were actually wrong and therefore not entirely helpful. Anyways … the good thing was that I finally managed to get our heating and warm water advance payment accounted for, so we could buy the trailer entirely from that. The disturbing part of this sudden income is, that the calculation is still wrong (against our favour) and I am still waiting for the final (hopefully correct) numbers.

And until February next year I spent two days per week waiting for it together with Erik. I am not yet fully sure of whether a part time parental leave is something I would recommend to others, but it’s the experiment I am currently doing. And in any case it great to be home more often and without deadlines (well with less at least).

Since I mentioned the ATLAS model above and deadlines just now. I also put a deadline for second order call and as a result of that I have ordered more than 25 large models for institutes all around the world! Also my small model is getting more and more successful. I have order about 50 pieces this time and there is plans for significantly more in the future.

More Beijing

Beijing, China, Physics

Today the SUSY2012 conference finally started! For me, once again with not being woken up by my alarm and without (my all incl.) breakfast. Anyways, I made it to the conference for the second talk … puh. The first one started already at 8:30 am.

But mainly I wanted to summarise my yesterday’s version of the Beijing marathon.
I started out with a long metro trip to the Temple of Heaven, took a big tour through the park and the various temples; made my way to the Lama Temple and the surrounding area; took a long walk in the Yuandadu Chengyuan Ruins Park (its the city wall remains park … in which I did not see any city wall remains); and finally made my way to – where else should it be for a marathon – the 2008 Olympic’s Park – the Olympic Green. Gosh … I was wasted after that day.

In terms of other stats: I seemed to have chosen the wrong path at some places which made the proud owner of 78 mosquito bites. And that’s only the ones I can see myself, I can feel more … In addition, it shows that I should have brought my hiking boots, since I got three very nice blisters walking around in my Sambas :(