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.

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.

Pub quiz, waste and ballet

Copenhagen

… that’s last week in very short words.

In more details, this mean that last Thursday “Non Trivial” (this week’s team name) made first place at The Globe pub quiz, even though there was a European Sing Contest section which we failed miserably. Apparently the other 25 teams did so as well ;)

On Saturday we went on a tour through the local ARC incineration plant, as part of the Danmarks International Region days. I got a tour through the plant following the waste. Sounds weird but was actually quite interesting. In the end we had a look at the construction site of the new plant, Amager Bakke, which is supposed to be ready in 2017.

After some chill-out time at the beach bar of the Copenhagen Cable Club, watching wakeboarders fly and dive, and a bit of geocaching, we rounded of the day with “Romeo’erne og Julie” performed in the incineration plant. It was a very nice mixture of cello and electronic music and both classical dance and Parkour. One even got used to the slight smell of all the waste in the background ;)
The only bad thing about the event was, that there were hardly any people to see this great performance!