QuarkNet an der Elbe: A tale of 2 labs
| The latter half of this week saw your old humble correspondent visiting two rather different European labs. I arranged to work with QuarkNet and CMS physicist Tom McCauley at CERN and decided to visit Arne Schoenwald, Michael Walter, and Ulrike Behrens at DESY Zeuthen, just outside Berlin: it was sort of one the way, given how travel works these days. At Zeuthen we talked about cosmic ray programs and detector technology. They use silicon photomultipliers in their cosmic ray detectors - pretty cool. They also leant me a GPS to get the detector I am using at TU-Dresden on the air for uploads to the e-Lab and they showed me around a bit. Here is some of what I saw: |
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A camera for atmospheric cerenkov from cosmic rays developed at DESY for the HESS experiment. |
The 1 square meter muon telescope at DESY. |
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Speaking of Arne and DESY Zeuthen, have you signed up for International Cosmic Day? It is close but not yet too late! Go to: https://indico.desy.de/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=10379. At CERN, Tom and I have worked on gearing up for the 2015 version of the CMS masterclass - much the same but with improvements - and on an upgrade to the CMS e-Lab. I can only say right now that we have a plan and we think it will be good. Stay tuned: this summer might be a good time for your center to have a CMS e-Lab workshop. Also, coming soon: LHC Open Data. Watch this space! I encountered an unusual video display in Building 40 at CERN: artist Gianni Motti walked the entire LHC ring in 2005, trailed by a faithful camera operator. If watching someone walk through a manmade tunnel is what you like, you will love Motti's video either in B40 or at: http://www.continuitefilmique.net/motti-underground-ring-walking-lhc-tunnel-cern/. Finally, a bit more about Germany and PhDs. I Iearned this week that, in Germany, your doctoral thesis advisor is called by a name that describes a more perosnal, parental relationship: your Doktormutter or your Doktorvater*. Doktormutter. Doktorvater. I Ilke that. |
*Star Wars fans! That is Vater with a "t", not a "d"! Don't get too worked up!