Tomo's Summer Adventures at CERN

"This sandwich tastes like victory"

2009-07-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jack, the other undergrad working with the Harvard group here, and I decided to climb Le Reculet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Reculet), the second highest point in the Jura Mountains, with an altitude of 1718 meters. I have never been hiking before, so this undertaking was quite a challenge for me. I would say, without exaggeration, that it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done. But the view was totally worth it. Pictures below!

The first clearing we reached along the trail.

An old treehouse in a tree that was in the clearing.

One of the first good viewpoints we had along the way. Still not particularly close to the top.

A cool picture of the trail.

Me on the trail.

A view near, but still not quite at, the top.

An interesting rocky area we had to traverse on our way to the top.

A completely unexpected yet large grassy area on the way to the top.

The cross at the top of the mountain! Been there since the 1800s.

A view of Geneva from the top!

A closer up view of Geneva from the top!

A view of some of the farms outside of Geneva from the top!

The mountains on the other side, from the top.

Me at the top!

A Long Delayed Update

2009-07-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay on this update folks. I was having some issues with my camera uploading the pictures, but now I've resolved them.

Two weekends ago I went into Geneva to do some exploring. I went to the Plainpalais area, which I had not been to before. Notable things here include the Grand Theatre of Geneva, which hosts many different operas and other performances. Also, the Parc des Bastions is there, and it is quite beautiful. Below are some pictures:

The Grand Theatre (at least I think. I couldn't find a sign that actually said it. But this is where it was supposed to be, so that's what I'm going with).

A statue of General DuFour, Swiss General who oversaw the first Geneva Convention (where the Red Cross was established).

The gates to the Parc des Bastions.

A beautiful view inside the park. I love this picture.

I thought it was interesting that the University of Geneva was celebrating its 450th anniversary. That's really old.

The other big highlight of the weekend was the Parade du Lac, which took place on streets near Lake Geneva. It was interesting to attend a parade in Geneva on the 4th of July, and I was expecting it to be like a typical American parade, with the mayor waving from a float, etc. That was not the case at all. Apparently the tradition is that people dress up really crazy from this parade, and the actual floats consist of 10 different DJs with people dancing on them, and then the DJs set up at different places around the lake and throw parties all night. Here are some pictures from the parade:

A small blimp advertising the local radio station.

These two guys were dressed up as abnormally large gangsters. They had a suitcase that played music and inflatable tommy guns. This was the best picture I could get.

A picture of one of the floats.

Another float picture.

There was a ridiculous number of people here. You could barely move. This crowd spans all the way down the street.

Another crowd of people waiting further along the parade route.

That's all for now!

Visiting the UN

2009-06-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went into Geneva again, as has been my tradition so far. I started off in Old Town and walked around the perimeter of Lake Geneva (or Lac Leman, as they call it here), ended up at the UN headquarters, and then walked all the way back to old town to catch my tram and to a little grocery shopping.

On the way to the UN, the first stop was the Brunswick Monument. Apparently, the Duke of Brunswick died in Geneva and left a large sum of money to the city, stipulating that they build a mausoleum in his honor. Here are some pictures:

These are the lions around the steps to get into the mausoleum area.

This is a side view of the monument.

Me in front of the monument.

A statue that I can only assume is the Duke of Brunswick.

After seeing the mausoleum, I stumbled upon a free beach volleyball tournament that was taking place, sponsored by the department store Coop. There was a riveting match going on between a Canadian pair and a Swiss pair. Pictures below:

The Canadians are in green and the Swiss are orange. Canada ended up winning.

Being on the opposite side of the lake meant I could get some pretty good shots of the old part of town from across it. So, I snapped a couple photos.

A cool view of the Jet d'Eau and some of the buildings across from the pier.

A hilly residential area next to the Old Town.

Me walking on water. Residential area in the background.

On the way to the UN, I passed by the President Wilson Hotel and the Palais Wilson.

President Wilson Hotel. Named after Woodrow Wilson

The Palais Wilson, where the League of Nations was founded. Also dedicated to Woodrow Wilson.

Then, finally, I made it to the UN. In front of it there is a nice set of fountains and a large chair with one leg broken that is dedicated to those with physical disabilities.

Stereotypical tourist picture.

The UN!

The actual UN was closed, but I managed to snap this cool picture through the gates.

The last part of the circuit, on the way back to the tram stop, had some very interesting sights.

First, there was a series of interesting contraptions shaped like people set up by the Jet d'Eau.

Then, as part of a clean water campaign for the lake, the Swiss Ronald McDonald was there.

Then, there was this crazily dressed street performer charging 1 franc for a shot on goal. They were set up next to a toy store, so the little kids were loving it. I'm guessing the parents weren't.

And finally, outside the toy store, which is called Franz Carl Weber, I managed to get a picture with someone dressed as the Transformer Bumblebee. I felt sorry for them, because it was a really hot day.

So, that was my trip into Geneva for this weekend. It was pretty fun!

Fete de la Musique

2009-06-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the Fete de la Musique in Geneva, where you can walk around and there are basically musical performances anywhere you go. Also, all of the museums are open for free, so its a great time to go around and just explore the city.

But first, we had some particularly nice weather this week, so I decided to take some pictures from the office window to show you my view from work every day!

If I look out my office window and turn left, this is what I see. On the left side of the picture
is the start of a very large vineyard.

This is what I see if I turn right when I look out my window. It is the French town of St. Genis.

This is my main view every day. You can see the Jura Mountains and the town of Thoiry.

These are two of the other people in my office. The one sitting is Jack, the other undergrad here for the summer. The one standing is Alberto, the postdoc that I have been mainly working with.
In the background you can see the whiteboard full of things related to the work we have been doing.

Now, onto pictures from the Fete de la Musique. Jack and I went into town together to check it out, and we started out at the Musee d'Art et d'Historie (Museum of Art and History). Unfortunately, they don't allow you to take any pictures inside. We saw lots of cool Middle Ages armor as well as some very nice artwork (lots of Monet and Renoir in one section). Here are some pictures of the exterior of the museum:

This is the entrance of the museum.

A side view of the museum as you approach it.

A picture of the museum courtyard that I managed to sneak from a second floor window.

Then, came the bands. First, we went to go see a rock band that also snag a couple country songs in French called "Skim".

After that, we went and saw a cellist perform a beautiful piece by Bach at the museum. Outside the museum, there was a reggae band performing. In French. Needless to say, this was the last thing we expected in Switzerland. So, we got a picture:

This is the reggae band "The Green Kingdom".

After this, we went to the Parc de Bastions to see the jazz band "Pepper Funk" play. These guys were the best by far. Each musician was really talented, and we ended up staying through their whole set.
The jazz band "Pepper Funk"

A little pond in the park that I thought looked cool.

One of the buildings adjacent to the park.

On the way back to the tram stop, we went through the Place Neuve and I managed to snap a couple pictures of buildings from afar, though I'm not sure what they are.

This is one of the buildings on Place Neuve. You can also see one of the tents set up for the festival.

Finally, one of the cool things I found out while exploring today is that the water that comes out of the fountains in the city is actually drinkable! So I took a picture of a fountain while waiting for the tram to take me back to CERN.

Finally, I close with a picture of something outside a chocolate shop that I just found really amusing.

And no, you can't just go around buying gold bars in Geneva...

C'est pas sorcier

2009-06-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty low-key day...I just walked around CERN and explored. It was also very very hot, which wore me out a bit. I'm posting some more pictures from Geneva and also some interesting pieces of old detectors on display around CERN. See captions for descriptions!

Got to see the site where the Red Cross was founded!

I just thought this was a nice view of an old alleyway

A very typically European narrow uphill walkway

Saw many, many cool high end cars in Geneva. This would be a Ferrari

And I don't know what kind this is, but it was awesome in person.

The building with the black bricks is the oldest house in Geneva.

Now, onto some pictures of things at CERN:

This is the European Bubble Chamber. When it was running, it would be filled with a liquid such that when particles hit the liquid, their tracks form bubbles that we detect and take pictures of to analyze the data.

A view inside the bubble chamber from the bottom

The piston that was used to close up and create pressure in the bubble chamber.

This is an RF cavity from CERN's old accelerator, LEP. This is what drives the proton beam around the accelerator.

A side view of the RF cavity. The center part is where the beam would go through.

This whole setup is a Cockroft Walton generator, which is used to feed protons into the accelerator ring.

A closeup of the voltage stepper of the Cockroft Walton.

Another French bubble chamber called Gargamelle

View inside Gargamelle

This is a "solar fountain" that is on the lawn in front of CERN's Restaurant 1.
The solar energy collected by the panel is used to squirt water and keep a ball elevated in the air.

Closeup of the actual fountain part. It was a sunny day!

And finally, I get a big kick out of this. As you probably know, CERN's new accelerator is called the LHC. This sign in front of restaurant 1 says CERN LH...C'est pas sorcier. "C'est pas sorcier" can be interpreted as "It's not rocket science." I got a big laugh out of that!

My first trip into Geneva

2009-06-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

Today I went into Geneva for the first time and explored the "Old Town" part of town. I met up with a friend from Harvard, a fellow rising junior, Heidi, to see the sights. There were many old buildings and cool sights to see, and I have posted some pictures below!

This is the Jet d'Eau, a large fountain that spews water into Lake Geneva.

Me in front of a light tower next to the Jet d'Eau

The site of the fouding of the Red Cross

The Rhone River

A flower clock at the Jardin Anglais

Me with a fountain in the Jardin Anglais

Me with a cannon at the Arsenal in the city

Me in front of St. Peter's Cathedral

View of the top of St. Peter's Cathedral

Rooftop view of Lake Geneva and some of the city

Me on a cool balcony at this government office building

One of the office buildings there was mysteriously named "Alabama"

And finally, a view of the window of one of the many awesome bakery/chocolate shops in Geneva!

All in all, Geneva was exactly what I would picture a historic European city to be like. It's not a bustling metropolis, but it definitely has a nice poetic beauty to it!

The First 3 Days

2009-06-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in my room at CERN right now writing this post and I could not be more excited about the current state of events.

The trip to CERN was pretty standard. My first flight was from Chicago to Amsterdam, and one thing I will say is that I was very impressed with Schipol Airport (outside of Amsterdam). When I got off the plane, it was like I had walked into a big mall. There were huge amounts of stores, a museum, and even a casino. Here are a couple pictures from the airport at Amsterdam:

Above is the museum. I tried as hard as I could to squeeze in all the words, and this is what I got.

And this is a picture of the casino that was in the airport.

I then hopped on a connecting flight from Amsterdam to Geneva, where I was picked up by my professor and taken to CERN.

My first impression of CERN was one of amazement. As we were driving in I was craning my neck to try to see all the mountains and scenery, and on the actual lab grounds I was fascinated by the variety of buildings...some just warehouses where accelerator components are built, others beautiful works of architecture. For the first couple days, I had to register, wait for internet access, and read a few papers to understand the detector I will be working on. In my free time, I decided to walk around and take a look at some of the buildings. Below are pictures:

This building is the hostel where I am living on CERN's campus. Its about a ten second walk from the main cafeteria.

This is the building with some of the main offices for ATLAS, the detector I am working on.

This is the inside of the ATLAS office building, looking up from the bottom.

This is a model of the ATLAS detector, whose actual proportions are much much larger.

There are a couple more touristy buildings with old detectors and other such things that I am planning on visiting in the next few days, so there will be more pictures at that time.

Today was the most exciting day for me. I got to go to the building that is on top of the real ATLAS detector (which is ~90 meters underground) and see the detector/control room. There are shafts in the building with small platforms over them that allow you to go out and look down at the detector, and it was pretty cool to see it. It was also interesting to note that the elevator to actually be able to go down into the detector cavern is controlled by an optical reader...meaning you have to get your eye scanned just to go down and work on the detector. I obviously do not have this authorization, so I couldn't go all the way down and see it.

My favorite part of the tour that Alberto (a postdoc in our group) gave me was the control room. This is a room with a series of rows of computers and monitors where data is taken and the detector is run. We went through all the programs that run the muon chambers, which are the specific part of the ATLAS detector I will be dealing with. I wanted to take pictures of the control room, but I was a little too timid with all the physicists running around and doing work.

In the process of the tours, I found out what projects I will be working on. First, we have a control panel for the drift tubes of the muon chambers that we would like to incoporate into a larger program that they use for general control of the detector during accelerator runs. Some of the code is there, but it has to be modified and incorporated into a panel in the larger program. This shouldn't take me too long, and its really an exercise in learning how we control the hardware of the detector with our software. The second project is actually much cooler, and it basically involves writing a program that will send signals to every single drift tube in the detector, and be able to tell us which are working and which aren't. I'm really excited about this, because it will be used frequently in the control room once the accelerator is up and running.

Phew...that was a long post. Now, I leave you with a few more pictures of scenic views from CERN. I will update again soon.

Cool rainbow coming back from dinner.

Random sheep I encountered grazing (on CERN property!) while headed to see the control room.

My view of the mountains on my way to the Harvard office.

Inaugural Post

2009-06-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

This blog will be used to keep everyone back home informed of my adventures at CERN. Enjoy!