Belle II

Belle II, KEK, Outreach, Physics

This month I became a technical member of the Belle II Collaboration :)

In particular, I joined the communication team for the German BMBF collaborative research centre ErUM-FSP T09 Belle II and will contribute to the public-engagement strategy, the coordination of public outreach, and on Belle-II-specific training programmes for young scientists, for the German member institutes of the Belle II Collaboration in the coming six months for now.

So look forward to a new Belle II Germany website, some social-media activity and more things to come soon …

And by the way, Belle II is a particle-physics experiment in Japan designed to study the properties of B mesons (particles containing a bottom quark). It is located at the SuperKEKB accelerator complex at KEK in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture. The experiment is run and the physics programme carried out by an international collaboration consisting of about 1000 physicist and engineers from over 100 institutions in more than 25 countries.

Big Bang on Tour

CERN, Outreach, Physics
image credits: weltmaschine.de

This summer, the Weltmaschine travelling exhibition “Urknall Unterwegs” (Big Bang on Tour) started its journey through Germany. With games and interactive information, especially a tour through the history of the universe, the portable module is a perfect introduction to the world of particle physics and shows why it and many other forms of basic research are so important for our society.

As you can see from the picture above the travelling exhibition/showcase features a special German version of the Particle Twister game I developed together with Katarina Anthony.

EPS-HEPP Outreach Prize

BYOPD, EPS, LEGO, Outreach

I am very honoured that today it was announced that I am one three people to receive the 2021 Outreach Prize of the High Energy and Particle Physics Division of the European Physics Society (EPS).

The award is mainly given for setting up ‘Build Your Own Particle Detector‘ as an international outreach programme that reaches to an unusually young audience and for the design of particle-detector interlocking-brick models, by now used at over 60 places around the world.

Find out more about the ‘Build Your Own Particle Detector’ programme, the original model of the ATLAS detector and other experiments not designed by myself, as well as previous and possible future events and workshops at build-your-own-particle-detector.org.

Congrats to Uta and Ken as well :)

ATLAS detector slice

ATLAS, CERN, Design, Outreach, Video editing

In addition to new animated logos for video productions of the ATLAS Collaboration, I have been working on a revised, 1080p version of the animated ATLAS detector slice, showing the interaction of different particles inside the ATLAS detector.

Here’s a low-resolution preview …

… you can find the full-resolution version, along with still vector images of the empty detector slice, on the CERN Documents Server (CDS) now (stills and animated GIFs are here).

Note: The detector slice is based on earlier work/versions by Rebecca Pitt and Joao Pequenao.