Life as a physicist

Apologies for totally neglecting this blog for the last week...my computer decided to explode on Sunday. And by explode I mean just totally stop working. Windows 7 no longer boots on my computer, and the second operating system I installed for all of my work stuff doesn't work either. Ahh yes, how I love computers...sometimes I wonder why I'm going into a field that primarily uses computers, but then I remember that it's about the physics, not the computers. Most of my problems seem to stem from my complete frustration with everything about Windows - I'm not the most tech-savvy person out there, and Windows is just too finnicky for me apparently. Perhaps the Mac I'll be getting in a few short weeks will serve me better. I have a feeling those are more incompetant-user friendly (not that I'm incompetant, but you know what I mean).

So the bulk of the last three days has been trying to figure out what to do with my computer, with a little bit of work squeezed in here and there. It's actually been quite a busy three days. I met with a guy named Ali today, who did some diagnosis of my poor sick laptop, and it was pronounced dead. Sort of. I can't boot anything up because apparently something is wrong with my harddrive, but I'm really not quite sure how that happened. But there's a chance we might be able to get my files from it (hence the "sort of" dead diagnosis) - we will try doing that tomorrow. Fingers crossed! For now though, I am able to use a spare laptop from one of my REU coordinators that exists specifically for the purpose of in case one of our laptops dies. How convenient! So at least I have a laptop to use.

I realized the other day that I have not once talked about what I am doing for my work. I guess I am here to travel AND work, right? So here goes. Be warned, I don't even understand some of this stuff, so I will try to explain it as best as I can.

I am working with data from the Tile Calorimeter of the ATLAS detector here at CERN. When two protons collide in the accelerator, there is a whole bunch of stuff that comes out. There are millions of these collisions every SECOND, so you can imagine the immense amount of data that gets produced. The detectors that are placed around the accelerator are able to measure and record everything about all of this "stuff" that comes out of a collision (when, where, etc), but there is WAY too much to store. However, a lot of these collisions aren't very interesting at all, so there is a type of weeding system that happens, reducing the number of collisions, or "events", recorded down to a couple hundred per second. Much more manageable.

Each detector at CERN (and around the world for that matter) is made of multiple components, each designed for a very specific purpose. I work with data collected from the ATLAS detector, and specifically from the component known as the Tile Calorimeter (or TileCal for short). This component is responsible for stopping and measuring all the particles made up of what are called "quarks" - i.e. protons, neutrons, mesons, baryons...(Note: electrons are NOT made up of quarks, so they are actually measured and stopped by the electromagnetic calorimeter, which is located inside TileCal). The data I work with specifically is the corrupted data that is taken with TileCal. Data can be corrupted for known reasons (part of the detector wasn't working correctly at the time, known errors and uncertainties, etc.) or for unknown reasons. My job this summer is to examine different variables that are known about the data and try to figure out at least some of the unknown reasons the data is corrupted. It's definitely much different than any other physics research I've done - I'm not actually analyzing anything, I'm working with the detector itself.

I hope you enjoyed that brief physics lesson, and hopefully you understood at least a little of it! That has been my life as a physicist for the last month and a half. Now to the fun stuff.

On Saturday, I went to the Geneva Lake Parade, but unfortunately I forgot my camera so there are no pictures of it to share...I'm actually sort of mad I forgot it because this was quite an event, let me tell you. I've never seen a parade like this in my life. Curious yet?

The Geneva Lake Parade is the day of the year when all the clubs of Geneva get together floats and drive them down the streets. VERY slowly I might add. The whole train might move 20 feet down the street and then stay put, blasting their dance music for the next five minutes, move 20 feet, sit still for 5 minutes...definitely the slowest parade I've ever seen. I got to the parade around 4pm with my group, which was when it started, and it took about an hour and a half for all ~20 floats to pass us. We walked to the front of the parade, passed it, and decided to chill under a tree for a while. I went with a few other to see the Jet d'Eau up close - there's a pier that goes right out to it. So I got to run through the mist of the Jet. This was actually another reason I was mad I forgot my camera that day, because seeing it up close and personal was pretty awesome. My depth perception got really messed up, and even though I knew the water was shooting well over 400ft in the air, it looked like only 50ft. We headed back to the rest of the group after not too long, and headed to find dinner. I ended up eating at a kebob place (basically shaved meat with some lettuce, tomato, and a white sauce on a delicious roll).

After dinner, we decided to find the after-party of the parade. After walking along Lake Geneva for about half an hour, we finally found it. All of those 20 or so floats had parked in the street and there were crowds of people dancing in front of each one. It was insanely crowded and we kept losing people, so most of the time I was there was spent trying to find our comrades. I decided shortly that I was done for the night and wanted to head back to CERN, and a couple others joined me. That wasn't really my thing anyway. I enjoy hanging out with much smaller groups of people. But it was definitely an interesting experience. Just not one I'd really want to have again.

Sunday was spent relaxing and watching movies, up until about 9pm, when my computer exploded as explained above. But besides for that small situation, this weekend was relatively enjoyable! Just the break I needed before two big weekends of travel! Keep checking back for updates!