C'est pas sorcier

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

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

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

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