Category Archives: CERN

Kulturnatten – Culture night in Copenhagen

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 …

… 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 ;)

ATLAS LEGO model media coverage

Starting last weekend my ATLAS LEGO model is out in the open … since then my visitors count on this webpage increased by 10.000! The 3D image of the model is on the front page of the ATLAS website regularly and various newspapers and blogs already wrote about it …

  • ATLAS (link)
  • CERN Courier (Volume 52, Jan/Feb 2012, p. 43 + front page)
  • CNET Crave Gadget – Rich Trenholm (link)
  • Corriere della Fanatascienza – Leo Lorusso (link)
  • CrackJack.de (link)
  • CuteDecision – “2cute” (link)
  • dailymail.co.uk – Rob Waugh (link)
  • DigitalTrends.com – Jeff Hughes (link)
  • Discovery Center – Anne Mette Frejsel (link)
  • Forbes – Alex Knapp (link)
  • French Tribune – Bruce Totolos (link)
  • Galileu (link)
  • Gandul – Ioana Nicolescu (link)
  • Geek.com – Matthew Humphries (link)
  • Geekologie.com (link)
  • Gizmodo Australia – Logan Booker (link)
  • The Guardian – LifeAndPhysics – JonButterworth (link)
  • Ingeniøren –  Torben R. Simonsen (link)
  • Laboratory News – Kerry Taylor Smith (link)
  • NyTeknik – Jan Melin (link)
  • OSEL.cz – Stanislav Mihulka (link)
  • PClabs.com.tr – Erdem Gukrer (link)
  • PCWorld – Jason Kennedy (link)
  • PhysOrg.Com – Bob Yirka (link)
  • Physics World (Volume 25, 1 January 2012, p. 3)
  • Science&Vie Junior (Volume 273, June 2012, p. 36)
  • Scoop.It – Paulo Furtado (link)
  • ShlashGear – Shane McGlaun (link)
  • Der Standard (link)
  • Spektrum der Wissenschaft – Physik WebWatch (link)
  • Supermozg.pl – Bartosz Łopiński (link)
  • SyFy Idea Lab – Tiffany Lee Brown (link)
  • SyFy Idea Lab Interview – Tiffany Lee Brown (link)
  • Symmetry Breaking – Amy Dusto (link)
  • Technology Review – Peter Glaser (link)
  • Tiede – Maria Korteila (Volume 2, 2012, p. 58)
  • TG Daily – Emma Woollacott (link)
  • Traqueur Stellaire – Guillaume Calu (link)
  • Universitetsavisen (1) – Madhura Mukhopadhyay (link)
  • Universitetsavisen (2) – Polina Chebotareva & Mike Young (link)
  • University of Melbourne – Science Matters –  Cristen Teen (link)
  • The Verge – Ross Miller (link)
  • Wired – Katie Scott (link)
  • Wired Taiwan – Min-Fang Huang (link)
  • Wired GeekDad – Roy Wood (link)
  • Wired Science – Daniela Hernandez (link)

ATLAS model on world tour

This weekend the first public ATLAS build took place in Melbourne.

After the two models I built at NBI in Copenhagen, this is the first one to be build by others following our instruction videos, which can be found at http://atlas-model.mehlhase.info

With a bunch of children and LEGO enthusiasts the model was constructed in the Museum Victoria, where it is going to be on display from June 30th to July 15th in a LHC exhibition in connection to this year’s ICHEP in Melbourne.

After all the media attention the model already had, it now had its first appearance (as far as I know, please tell me wrong) in local TV news – Channel Seven in Melbourne to be more specific …

And this is only the beginning of the tour :)