Category Archives: Countries

Good bye Copenhagen

Copenhagen, Denmark

Finally the time has come.

It’s time to say good bye yet another time to a place that has yet even more become my second home. Having lived in Copenhagen for over five years within the past ten and it being the birthplace of my son, it’s been quite tough leaving the city today.

It has neither been easy the first time in 2005, nor the second time in 2007, but this time it really got to me.

Anyways … I wanted to thank everyone that had his/her share in making me enjoy the time in Copenhagen as much as I did.

Vi ses København
You never know …

Meeting Peter Higgs

Manchester, Outreach, Physics, UK

Just for completeness and for those of you who haven’t seen it on my Facebook page or the Build-Your-Own-Particle-Detector web site, I managed to get hold of Peter Higgs (one of this year’s two Nobel Prize winners in physics) to shake hands and sign one of my ATLAS LEGO models.

Organised by the University of Manchester, we had a very nice sit in and had him chat about his last weeks, how he got informed of his award and where he was (hiding) when he got to know about it. The particle physics group invited me to come over with my model and prepare everything for the day, where he also received a honorary degree from the university.

2013-10-17-03-41-26-manchester-higgs-events-craig-strong-2

What a week(end)

Copenhagen, Fotohalbmarathon, Manchester, Niels Bohr Institue, Outreach, Physics, UK

Quite an interesting week(end) that just ended. Besides the follow-up work for the CERN Open Days (deciding in winners, cleaning up, preparing shipments, etc.), I was preparing the Kulturnatten (open days) event of the particle physics group at the Niels Bohr Institute. Unfortunately the central organisation did not spend as much time thinking about the event as we did. Anyways, I think we made the best out of it and it actually went quite well. We had one auditorium with usual stuff like posters, videos and the LEGO models, plus our new self-made cloud chamber, which worked like charm for several hours. I spent almost four hours straight giving talks about ATLAS and more. A fact my voice seems to thank me for now :(

That done, and after only three and a half hours of sleep, we had the 2013 Fotohalbmarathon coming up on Saturday. This year we ended up with in total twelve teams taking part in the end. Some entered late, some had to cancel on short notice. But it’s a nice number, and people seemed to have enjoyed it.

After that, I started preparing my trip to Manchester, which I am going to start in only a few hours. Once more, I had to disassemble and pack the original Copenhagen LEGO model and I will take it on the plane in a bit.

Together with some people from Manchester, I will rebuild it tomorrow and on Wednesday non other than Nobel Prize winner Peter Higgs is going to sign it :)
I am admittedly quite excited :)

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.