Google Photos: https://goo.gl/photos/UkZud5a8YfGTbfPk9
CERN
This week at CERN, I mainly focused on getting down my data reconstruction methods and presented at the ATLAS Upgrades Week! You can find my presentation at this link:
Geneve Light Show
At Geneve University this week a 20 minute light show was displayed on the universities main building. Parts of the show included various scientific elements such as DNA, Molecules and Atoms! Take a look in the Google Photos for more views.
CERN
This week at CERN, I mainly focused on getting down my data reconstruction methods and presented at the ATLAS Upgrades Week! You can find my presentation at this link:
Geneve Light Show
At Geneve University this week a 20 minute light show was displayed on the universities main building. Parts of the show included various scientific elements such as DNA, Molecules and Atoms! Take a look in the Google Photos for more views.
Bern
This week for my trip, I went to Bern! Starting off my day, I went to Einstein's House and was able to see a nice description as to the life of Einstein! After that, I went over to see some the Bern Bear pit which was closed :(. Therefore, I went over to checkout the awesome Natural History Museum in Bern. Once that was done, I went to see another light show in Bern. The Bern light show was a lot more focused on Switzerland and Swiss culture as seen through the pictures of fondue pots, the red cross and other Swiss elements.
Google Story: https://goo.gl/photos/fd1ADdcmQqHu2ESk7
I was able to try a fair amount of different food in Greece. First, I had a pork gyro my first night with ham and cheese croquettes. Both were amazing with a very nice flavor. Additionally, I had some lamb and lemon potatoes for lunch the next day. After for dinner, I had the Greeks version of lasagna without pasta but with eggplant in replacement and some white tuna. For Breakfast, I had a sweet treat of some baklava which is filo dough with honey and some pistachio nuts!
CERN
This week at CERN, I kept on developing the algorithms to analyze data from the Cesium scans (Code here: ).https://github.com/anthonytec2/CERN-Tile-Cal-MAPMT. One of the most important parts of my project is developing a solid array processing algorithm for tiles to peaks. Therefore, I am currently working on a way to add the different pixels from the Multi Anode PMT(MA- PMT) to perform this operation.
Acropolis
I was able to visit the Acropolis during my trip to Greece. The Acropolis was a set of various ruins from ancient Greece. One of the most interesting part of the ruins is they were developed to be visually appealing in multiple ways. For example, rather than feel the building is going to fall onto you the building leans inwards. Additionally, the stairs along a same level are not at the same height, in the middle they are raised by a few centimeter. Lots of optical illusionary were performed on some of the ruins of the Acropolis! Take a look at some of the pictures to see more.
Temple of Poseidon
The Temple of Poseidon is right at the Southern Tip of mainland Greece near the Aegean sea. Perched right at the top of a hill, this temple has a beautiful view of the Athenian countryside and of the islands of Greece.
Food
Link to Google Story: https://goo.gl/photos/pn7ex6iDBGiwpJwA8
CERN
For an update on my work at CERN check the link to my presentation this week: https://indico.cern.ch/event/568529/
Also another one I helped develop:
https://indico.cern.ch/event/580801/contributions/2361109/attachments/1365015/2067393/PMTResults.pdf
London
London was a pretty fun place to visit! One wierd thing I felt when visiting was my transition from a French speaking country back to an English speaking country. Whenever a spontaneous event which I needed to respond to, I would immediately spew out my French, realizing opps I meant “Blah Blah” in English.
Tower of London
The Tower of London was a palace and prison all in one. The tower was used to hold many high level political prisoners and was fortified by a group of guards. Currently at the tower, the crown jewels are housed inside the complex. The crown jewels consists of various items used for the coronations of the queens of London. Additionally, the tower has other areas such as a torture area, a church and a bunch of small houses.
Tower Bridge
Tower Bridge connects the two halfs of London, the bridge consists of two main towers which are connected with a upper and lower walkway. The upper walkway is a vantage point to see the whole city and devoted to the history of bridges. I was able to get some awesome pics over the whole city from here!
Bonfire Night
Bonfire night is in memorial to Guy Fawkes who tried to set fire to the British Parliament building, although he failed. Therefore, in memory to this event a memorial of this event is held every year on the attempted day of November the 5th(See V for Vendetta if you have not). My Bonfire night consisted of attending an array of events held at Battersea park. During my time there, I saw a little fire show, huge bonfire lighting and a music synced fireworks show. All of it was amazing! Some of the songs with the fireworks really made the show spectacular.
The Eye
The eye for those not familiar is a giant ferris wheel with a diameter of 120 meters. I was able to ride the ferris wheel and snap some really nice city scape pictures of London.
British Museum
The British Museum is a free sight with many famous items in its collection such as the Rosetta Stone. I was able to visit here for an hour and see many of the ancient history collections from Egypt and Japan! Overall this museum was really cool and would have definitely spent more time here.
Here is the Google Photos story for week 6: https://goo.gl/photos/VKH5i9ZnSJPz4D9U7
Here is the Google Photos story for week 7: https://goo.gl/photos/AN5eq6mLXFJZfRe17
Here is the Google Photos story for week 7: https://goo.gl/photos/AN5eq6mLXFJZfRe17
THIS POST WILL BE REVIEWED LATER, I honestly have like zero time for anything so I am just going to post this and review at another point.
CERN
This week at CERN, I began to participate in some of the radioactive tests for the tile calorimeter module. Just a quick recap of the Tile Calorimeter is that it is a bunch of subdetectors made of scintillator which fluoresce when an energetic particle strikes the material. This fluorescent signal is then transferred to a photomultiplier readout via fiber optic cables. Now back to the test, basically a radioactive source is passed through a network of tubes to each sub detector. Therefore, when the source hits one submodule a signal will produced at the photomultiplier readout. This test was originally designed for single anode PMT, hence it was not optimized for the readout process of 64 more anodes for the multianode PMT.
A setup was rigged using the old hardware in the case where 48 integrator boards were placed on a super drawer(sliding electronics unit in the whole detector module). 47 of these signals sampled the multi anode PMT and 1 sampled a single anode PMT for a control. Next week we will continue to test this hardware and then finally place it in the tile calorimeter module for use.
Aside from the radioactive test setup, I had given a talk this week about the progression of the 3D printing fiber light guide process. So far, I have developed 4 different versions of my fiber light guide. Finally in the 4th generation, I have placed fibers in the module and began the epoxy process to glue in the fibers. If you want to see more about this check out: https://indico.cern.ch/event/578750/contributions/2345411/attachments/1357769/2053193/3D_Printing_Fiber_Light_Guide.pdf
Rome
Once again, I have given a short description of my time in Rome at each place. Although, please do check out the photo album of these places.
Vatican City
I got to see the Pope!!!! I went to the Vatican museum on Saturday and viewed all the different art work. After that, I went to St Peter’s Square to find the whole area was filled. I discovered after seeing a large screen with the Pope’s image display he was in the square. Therefore, I sat listening to the Italian, when all of a sudden the Italian switched to English. I found out that people had come from around the world to do a journey from Italy to Spain visiting major cathedrals along the way and living as peasants would have for repentance. At the end of the event, the Pope blessed everyone in the square!
Castel Sant Angelo
The Castel Sant Angelo is a castle in Rome that had a great view of the whole city of Rome. The castle has about 5 different floors built for guards to keep watch over the city. Decorated all throughout the castle are cannons, murals and artifacts.
Roman Forum
The Roman Forum is the grounds of an old city center. One interesting comment about this Forum is there is artifacts from a mixture of centuries.
Coliseum
I took a tour inside the Coliseum. I was able to view the various seating platforms for citizens and some of the trip doors used to raise animals.
Food
Hands down Rome has had the best food of my trip! My first night in Rome, I had an amazing meal featuring, fresh mozzarella, pasta carbonara, pig and some really good mineral water. Molto Beni! Aside from that meal, the pizza in Rome was amazing! One unique meal I had in Rome was a place called the Prosciutteria. At the Prosciutteria, I got a meat and cheese board all from the local Italy region! Legit was the best! I had a great culinary experience here and definitely rank it above Paris.
Paris
Notre Dam
Notre Dam is one of the famous cathedrals in Paris. Going inside the cathedral was free and had tons of cool artworks to see. The cathedral had massive ceilings with awesome stained glass from all around.
Versaille
Versaille was an awesome city filled with really interesting castle rooms for the king. Additionally, I went outside to the gardens which were very well kept. Only note about the gardens is only one of the fountains(out of ~100) were running. Therefore, I would definitely recommend visiting versaille in the summer season.
Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe is centered at the meeting point of 12 streets. The arch was built as a victory arch for military parades after winning wars. One the top of the arch there is an awesome look out over the entire city. I went up there and got some night cityscapes with the Eiffel Tower in the foreground, take a look in the album.
Eiffel Tower
See post last time in Paris about cool things of the Eiffel Tower.
French Pantheon
The French Pantheon is home to many famous French people's bodies such as Marie Curie and Voltaire.
Google Photos Story Link: https://goo.gl/photos/dyXSSy3jJY2nKDep8
CERN
This week at CERN, I spent my time testing the data acquisition system for reading out data from fiber optic cables. I discovered after data analysis that the data has a large amount of noise. Therefore, I attempted to sample the background without fiber optic signals and subtract the mean of the background from my signal as a method of noise reduction. Even after attempting to perform this operation, my signal was not visible. After all of this, I attempted to sample the actual signal straight from the sensor using an oscilloscope. I was able to acquire this and found, very little noise and a clear 1mV signal. Once I had seen this, immediately I knew we just needed a better readout system then what is currently used.
Aside from lab work, this week was Tile week, which is a week devoted to the running, debugging and upgrading of the Tile Calorimeter. I attended almost all the sessions related to upgrades as my project is in the upgrades sector. During the week, I developed one slide for the larger optics feasibility study presentation related to my custom 3D printed fiber coupling scheme. If you would like to take a look at some of the talk this week, including mine, check out: https://indico.cern.ch/event/573823/ (my slide is in the last talk)
Paris
This weekend, I went to Paris for the day! I was able to see the Louvre and the Mondial de l’auto exhibit, check out some short descriptions below:
Louvre
The Louvre was an awesome museum to see! I went to the Dinde section for the majority of time that I was there, which included ancient Roman and Greek work. Additionally, this is the section that included a view of the Mona Lisa. I budgeted myself, four hours for this museum but you can definitely spend days here. After hitting many of the key works I wanted to see in the Dinde section, I immediately speed ran through other key works including Napoleon's apartment, the crown jewels and many more works. I tried to take a few photos here and there, check them out on the google story.
Mondial de l’auto
The Mondial de l’auto is one of the largest auto shows in the world held in Paris. The show featured, 8 different huge exhibition halls filled with many of the latest and greatest cars. I started off at the 1st building and was only able to make it to building 7 by the time the show closed(Spent like 5 hours here). All the show halls were just so amazing, I spent every second admiring the beauty of all of the cars. One interesting part about the show was, concept cars were a large part of some exhibitions. Many of these cars had a dazzling shell, with awesome ideas behind them like fully electric, autonomous driving capability or full body analytics(blinking, head turning, awareness, sleepy, tons more). Another cool part about the show was there was a exhibit hall devoted to movie cars. I was fascinated by all the different cars, I had seen before, such as: Ghostbusters’ car, Jurassic Park’s Jungle car, 007 film cars and many more. I loved this show and would definitely recommend for car enthusiasts to visit.
Tour Montparnasse
The Montparnasse tower was a 59th story panoramic sky view of Paris, conveniently located right near my hotel! Without a doubt, when in Paris, come here. The tower, has a beautiful view from the 59th floor including views of the Eiffel Tower. Now it can get a little cold up there, hence bring a jacket or relax on the heated 56th floor viewing area. Also, if you're hungry or want something to drink there is a nice snack stand on the 56th floor. Back to the view, I was able to see the Eiffel Tower twinkle during its once an hour twinkle, on the top of the hour. I have some really cool pictures here, so check them out!
Geneva
I got back from Paris at 10am, so I still had a large amount of time to tour around Geneva until work tomorrow. Therefore, I finally was able to go and see the UN building in Geneva. The UN building has a pretty cool scene, including a fountain show, the broken chair and row of flags. I'm definitely going to come back for a tour of the building, so check back for a description of that! After that, I saw a sign for a park, which I thought would be a normal little path with some nice fall foliage. I was surprised to find a full botanical garden with a small zoo!
Nature Walk
The botanical gardens are beautiful, they had plants from all different exotic locations. The gardens even had a small little zen garden with a Japanese style setup. Additionally, one side of the gardens there was a zoo with deer, mountain goats, ducks, flamingos and many more animals. While visiting all these locations, I noticed a weird roped off path people kept walking down. I followed this path, and saw a sign detailing that this was a nature walk of the whole Geneva lake shore. I kept following the route, seeing all the beautiful lake views and different gardens of Geneva. This was an awesome little event!
Food
Food in Paris was hands down amazing. The French know how to cook food with fresh and quality ingredients. I had 3 meals in Paris each great! Many times though, I had no clue what I was ordering, therefore what came out of the kitchen was a surprise to me. Quick wrap up of the food that I ate, veal scaloppine, steak?, sauteed potatoes, mushroom sauce pasta, duck, french fries, Nutella crepe and a croissant. Great mix, do come to Paris if you want some quality food.
As for back in Geneva, I went to Domaine de l’orcy(Apple orchard) on Sunday. The orchard was small, although still had some great trees to pick all different types of Apples. Now, I wasn't there for Apples but for Apple cider, my favorite fall time beverage! Sadly, from first sight, all they had was jus de pomme(Apple Juice), which I wound up buying a 5L box. Later when I got home, I discovered my Apple Juice really was Apple Cider! All in all, this week was a great food week with some quality dishes.
Google Photos for this week: Link
https://goo.gl/photos/B59t2iYb6dpCKYhk7
https://goo.gl/photos/B59t2iYb6dpCKYhk7
CERN
This week at work, I spent most of my time learning new techniques in Solidworks. For example, I learned how to create multiple planes to develop sketches on and develop a feature between these two planes. This skill is important for my fiber coupling project, as I need to design a unique device the changes a polar array hole pattern into a linear array hole pattern. One of the interesting concepts of my design is that each of these holes will be isolated from each other reducing crosstalk amongst fibers. As for the coupling between the polar array of holes and the fiber bundle, I am performing an interesting DSP technique to perform this operation. First, I take a picture of a fiber bundle. After, I then take this image into MATLAB and perform a cropping and edge detection algorithm. The edge detection algorithm in this process reveals the fiber bundle’s pattern, hence allowing for the perfect development of a 1 to 1 fiber coupler. One thing that I still have not figured out is how to exactly map the hole pattern, although I think I can perform some sort of curved cut. I will continue working on trying to develop and implement this next week.
One other part of my week was attending a seminar for the book, “Only the Longest Threads,” by Tasneem Zehra Husain. One cool part of the book is that it is a fictional book about all of physics biggest discoveries. Each chapter of the book details a different discovery from the point of view of not the “Famous Discover” but, the graduate and PhD students performing the work leading up to the discovery. A little about the author, Husain is a Pakistani string theorist working in Cambridge, United States of America, on new theoretical physicists concepts. Husain highlighted that one of the most important parts about the book was developing the idea, science is a group effort! She highlights this by, giving the perspective of the people who developed and performed the experiments that lead to a discovery. After reading the first two chapters of the book, I find this concept artfully developed! Additionally, the book has a very nice introduction to physics concepts for that of any interested person in the field.
Berlin, Germany
This week, I went to Berlin, Germany! The city had tons to see. Additionally, while I was in Berlin there was a festival of lights, which I was able to see. The trip was awesome, I will list of few things I saw below, along with a short description.
German Buildings
During my time in Berlin, I had taken a 6 hour walking tour of Berlin. The tour visited various places such as museum island, Berlin church, Checkpoint Charlie, Ghost Stations, the Brandenburg Gate, the Silent Library, the Jewish memorial and the Reichstag. Throughout the tour, our guide from Pittsburgh described all the intricate details of German history for each these monuments. I will try to do a quick review for some of these buildings:
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie was the crossing point between the Western sector of Berlin(American Side) to the Eastern sector of Berlin(Soviet Side). During my visit to the replica checkpoint in Berlin various signs were up all around describing what I just said above, in Russian/English. Additionally, “American Soldiers”(Dressed up Germans) were standing in front of the checkpoint for photos(4 euros each).
Ghost Station
A ghost station is a metro station in central Berlin that was shut down to disallow easy travel between Eastern and Western Berlin. At each ghost station, a wall was placed in front of all easily accessible entrances. The only people able to access these stations were members of the Ministry of State Security who would keep watch of the metro tunnels. The reason why people had to do this is the Soviet party had fears, that if enemies were to attack they would come from the underground system. One problem with this system was the tunnels were left open for border guards to travel. Hence, many guards would just cross the border to West Germany from East Germany to enjoy the freedoms of that side. After Soviets saw this happening, a wall was put up against all train station platforms with peep holes for officers to continue watch but not travel to get to the tunnels. As an additional layer, guards were watching each other for out of line behavior eliminating radical thoughts of escape.
Silent Library
The silent library is a memorial to the books that were burned by a group of students removing any freethought books from school libraries during the Soviet era. Just as no one can go back and turn back time of the removal of all these books, the silent library is an underground memorial unreachable to anyone. The memorial is viewed through a small glass window in the ground, which one can see 4 huge book shelves empty.
Jewish Memorial
The Jewish memorial is a memorial to the events of the Holocaust. The memorial is a huge sight which looks like a 2D histogram(bunch of piled up stone at different locations). One interesting idea about the whole memorial is there are no signs that indicate what is this place. Therefore, people can roam free about it without the knowledge of properly respecting the memorial. An idea as to why this is done is to signify the duty of bystanders to stop other people’s erroneous actions, which lacked during the rise of the Nazi party. Another interesting idea of the memorial is the different stacking heights of the blocks in the memorial. One interpretation of this is to signify the amount of bodies stacked into different graves. Lastly, the whole memorial has no described meaning, so any interpretations can be made(Take a look at picture to make your own).
Potsdam
Potsdam is a royal city built with many different palaces amongst the city for the Prussian Kings. Normally, people usually spend 8 hours here, since I had a tour, I only had about an hour. Hence, I had to rush through a lot of buildings in a small amount of time. First when I got into the town, I saw one of the magnificent little piazza with a bright pink color throughout the whole region(Interesting to see the color changes from Berlin to Potsdam, going from grays and black to pinks and light blues). As I walked from the piazza, I found a whole little town with restaurants, groceries and tons other things. After walking through the town, I reached the park where the one palace I saw was present. The palace was amazing, there was a beautiful fountain display in the middle, a small vineyard in front of the palace and an open air theater in the back of the palace. After seeing this palace, I had to sprint right back to the train station to make my illuminated tour!
Festival of Lights
The Berlin Festival of Lights was by far the coolest part of my trip. Two Berlin light groups started this festival, illuminating various monuments around Berlin. Every year the groups develop a theme for the festival, this year the themes were, Light Connects and Light Crosses Cultures. I am not going to describe all the various illuminated monuments, it is better to just take a look through all the cool pictures that I have taken! One that I am just going to point out is the green map on a wall, which is actually an illumination of the subway map of Berlin.
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial (Stasi Political Prison)
The Hohenschönhausen Memorial is the political prison used by the Stasi to hold political prisoners. Some reasons for being thrown in this prison were any anti East Berlin action, such as plans to cross the border, protesting in East Berlin and not doing your fair share of work. The prison was setup for isolation of all prisoners, therefore no human connections can form and you start to break down. During prisoner's’ time in the prison, the only person you were allowed to talk to was your interrogator. These interrogators had one goal which was to flesh out an other East Berlin defectors. Since prisoners did not talk to anyone else many times connections would form between interrogators and prisoners, hence Stockholm Syndrome would take effect, resulting in giving up information.
Food
During my time in Berlin, I was able to have Berlin's classic currywurst two times during my trip. For those not familiar, currywurst is basically sausage steamed and fried, kind of like a hot dog. Aside from currywurst, I had a great dish of pork loin and vegetables for dinner with some special German sauce. As for breakfast, I had a Berliner, which is a jelly donut making fun of a speech given by John F. Kennedy(search up for more info). Finally for my last meal in the airport, I had a Salmon burger!
Google Story for this week: https://goo.gl/photos/LV1dvfmbZ6CuGLK47
CERN
My 3rd week at CERN went well! First off, I was able to finish a large part of my webserver project. This involved creating various new PHP, Python and Javascript scripts to perform various actions for the physics server. All that is left to do on the project is to implement some routines to parse and sanitize user input. If any one would like to check out the stable version of the site(none of my new features are implemented in this): https://spectrum.web.cern.ch/spectrum/develop/index.html.
As for the work on my tile calorimeter project, this week I didn't get to do much, since the 3D printers were unavailable. Although, I did get to present my work for this project on a live webcast to the University of Michigan sponsors. Here is a link for anyone who would like to learn more about my project:https://indico.cern.ch/event/568524/.
Aside from my projects at CERN, I have forgotten to mention that I am taking a French class at CERN. Every week, I have a 90 minute session with our professeur and we explore the French language! My first week, we went over basics like, “My name is, I am from New York, I am American.” The second week, we went over numbers, details about phone numbers in Switzerland and France and how to ask/give directions. This week was especially useful since, I am constantly in need to find where X place is located. Overall, I have found the classes very fun and useful, allowing me to perfect my French accent!
One last thing at CERN, this week I was able to view the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) control room, AMS experiment and beam test facility. My mentor brought us to all these places and had lengthy explanations about every intricate detail of these rooms. The LHC control room was by far the coolest. Inside the control room, there is about four different workstation areas with over 100 monitors in one workstation. Aside from at the workstation, there are also huge monitors around the room describing all the different LHC parameters such as: power, beam intensity, luminosity, energy and tons more! One of the coolest parts of the LHC was the safety system to start the detector. Just like in movies where you see there are two keys to launch a missile, there is an analogous system here at CERN. Here, there are about 100 keys which are used to go down into the LHC. Now, in order to start the detector all 100 keys must be in their slots to initialize power ramp up for the LHC. After seeing the LHC control room, our group was off to see the AMS experiment. This experiment is actually on the International Space Station(ISS) measuring various cosmic rays. Inside the experiment’s building, there is a small remote control room, a live view of inside the ISS and a replica of the detector on the ISS. One of the cool parts about the remote control room was the experiment had a live event visualizer to highlight cosmic ray paths! After AMS, our group headed to the beam test facility where one of the LHC’s beams is used to test and calibrate new sensor modules. The room where all this is done is massive, to move things about the room there is a huge ceiling crane that scans the room. This experience was awesome, getting to go inside and see so many sensors in their infancy.
European Night
Friday at CERN was European science night. At the event, various documentaries were being shown of physics phenomena, which were developed to appeal to young kids at the event what science is like. Aside from the documentaries, CERN’s globe was opened up for people to walk through the halls. In the globe, there are various pictures of the experiments’ detectors at CERN, particles and a bunch of inspirational quotes. At the bottom of the globe, tours were being offered to see the ATLAS control room and to view the Universe of Particles exhibit. Since I had already been to the ATLAS control room, I went to view the Universe of Particles exhibit. The exhibit was awesome, the room was dark with tons of glowing orbs where various small facts of particle physics were mentioned. Additionally, there was a cosmic ray viewer, that made a flash of light whenever a cosmic ray hit the material! At the end of all this, I got a “New York Hot Dog” from some of the food vendors brought in for the event. The hot dog featured, sausage, pain de maiz, bolognese, cheese and fried onions! The hot dog was pretty good with this unique set of ingredients.
Nyon
Saturday, I visited Nyon, a city in Switzerland. Originally, I had intended to go to Yvoire, which is a French city across the way from Nyon. Although, the weather on Saturday in France/Switzerland was tons of rain. Therefore, I opted for the short 15 minute train ride from Geneva to Lyon, instead of a ferry ride across lake Geneva. Overall, Nyon was a cool small town to visit. During my visit, there was the festival of Nyon which featured various street vendors and artists performing. I spent some time going through the various vendors, awing at the amazing food such as fresh proscuitto, crawfish croquettes and assorted desserts from local bakeries. After searching through all the vendors, I got a pig sandwich! The meat for the sandwich came straight from a pig that was skewered and roasting over an open fire pit! Aside from food, I visited the castle of Lyon and the old city town. The castle featured tons of little crests of Switzerland and a great balcony view over the city. After viewing the castle, I packed up and went back roaming the streets of Geneva for the day!
Mont-Saleve
Sunday, a group of the US students in my CERN program went to climb Mont-Saleve. The route had taken the group about 3 hours to climb up and 2 hours back down. Along the hike, we were able to see tons of cool little things. Such as, the mountain village, we discovered! This village had a little church, school, restaurant and a farmers market for Sunday. Also, many of the buildings had a beautiful antique look which added to the wow factor of the little town. In addition to the village, on the way there we were able to see a cow farm at the top of the mountain! One cool thing about the cows, was they all had the little swiss cow bell on them. After the cow farm, we finally reached the top of the mountain after walking another 10 minutes. The top of the mountain had a beautiful look out over the whole city of Geneva/ parts of France. We were even able to see the spewing water of the jet d’eau from the top of the mountain! All in all, this was an amazing weekend to enjoy the outdoor beauty of Switzerland!
Check back next week for another adventure story!
Here is the google story that I created for now: https://goo.gl/photos/vVU8U3x4KrNZrk3Q7
Quick Note about my photos: I am sorry for the lack of resolution in my google photos, I am downloading a 50Mb photo file off my camera which gets down converted by my phone to 1Mb. I will upload full resolution pictures once I get back to the states.
Quick Note about my photos: I am sorry for the lack of resolution in my google photos, I am downloading a 50Mb photo file off my camera which gets down converted by my phone to 1Mb. I will upload full resolution pictures once I get back to the states.
Cern
This week at work, I really got into the grind of things. First, i designed and implemented a fiber optic mount( used to couple fibers to sensor) using a 3D printer. The interesting thing about this project is my group was unfamiliar with a 3D printer. Therefore, after showing them the results I could achieve they wanted me to continue building more models. Currently, the group has a machiner who takes about 2 weeks to make parts, but with the rapid prototyping of a 3D printer this should go down to zero. Additionally, I am going to develop a microlens array to help fibers be evenly distributed over a pixel. I will include some drawing with this to further highlight the details.
The second project that I worked on this week was a website to develop theory and experimental data plots. A large part of this project had been implemented by a past student, although I am adding on many additional features. Currently, the plots created via this server are static images, what I have implemented is a graphing utility to modify the plots intrer-web. This will be of great use to many physicist who would like to modify and share data plots amongst each other. The code that I have written for this project is in an assortment of scripting languages such as Python, HTML, PHP and Javascript. Also, I have developed an automated utility in bash to set up the necessary parameters for hosting the website.
Along with my projects, I attended a open data outreach program for the ATLAS experiment. This program is set for undergraduates to allow them to see the steps in analyzing data from the ATLAS experiment to find the Higgs Boson. Our job in the program was to test all the parts of the program and optimize it for easier readability. If any of you would like to take a look yourself the site is now live at atlas.opendata.cern.ch!
Barcelona
For my second week, I had taken a trip from Geneva to Barcelona for La Merce. La Merce is a giant festival in Barcelona for 4 days celebrating Our Lady of Mercy with tons of fun events! I am going to list a few below and along with some side trips.
Parc Guell
Parc Guell for those not familiar is a housing development, developed by the famous engineer, architect and designer, Antoni Gaudi. Antoni Gaudi was visionary who was very detail oriented in all of his projects. His project Parc Guell was developed in the early 1900s in a remote part of Barcelona inaccessible by public transportation. As a results of this, not that many people bought these plots of land, which left him with only two customers. Thus, his project slowly derailed and only 2 houses of the larger community were built. Even with two houses, Gaudi’s masterpiece of Parc Guell is a beautiful community. Gaudi implemented many abstract concepts in this community such as self draining benches, mushroom shaped chimneys and intricate mosaics apart of everything. The coolest part about Gaudi was that he performed the whole design process: from idea to implementation.
Cosmocaixa
Cosmocaixa is a science museum in Barcelona, with over 5 floors of mind boggling exhibits! Thanks to the La Merce festival, I was able to get into this museum for free, while it is normally 4 euros. The coolest exhibit at this museum was a live rain forest with a pond that they developed. In the forest/pond, I was able to see animals such as turtles, catfish, fire ants and tons more! Aside from the forest, another few exhibits that were interesting were: a light exhibit(highlighting diffraction, snell's law, brewster angle and lens), a huge brick of ice (that you could try to imprint your thumb, if it didn't freeze to death), a standard pendulum exhibit and a strobe light water freeze exhibit. Overall, this was an awesome place to visit and I recommend to anyone visiting Barcelona to take a trip.
Dance of the Giants+Human Towers
The Dance of the Giants is a tradition for the La Merce feast where “Giants”, basically large stilted people, dance with each other in a large square. The characters of these giants are based off political figures. All together, there were about +20 different giants who danced in the square, most of the time in pairs. After the giants left the forum, various competing groups from around Catalonia developed Human Towers. Human Towers are huge masses of people standing on top of each other. In one case the tower was 5 people high and it would move amongst the square.
International Fireworks Festival
After one of my friends got me into photography, I have been very interested in long exposures. I have taken long exposures before of various things such as meteor showers, fireworks and light painting. Therefore, I knew when I attended the fireworks festival in Barcelona, I wanted to get some more pictures. One problem with my setup for this festival was I did not have my tripod. Normally, I use my tripod to get nice and stable pictures. Therefore, I had a problem getting stable pictures, which I slightly fixed by using my backpack and the ground as a stable reference plane. All in all, I got some decent pictures which need to be post processed with some noise removal. Aside from photos of the event, it was awesome fireworks show lasting 20 minutes.
Building Illumination
The Building illumination was where various projectors were set up to align with a building’s structure and feature a light show/colorful facade. The building illumination occurred at two places one at a government house and another near the Arc de Triomf. The one at the Arc de Triomf building had a music component to it where someone would select a genre using a laser pointer. As a result, a dazzling light show would form all over the building.
Little Spanish Village
The little Spanish village was a place where different regions of Spain’s culture is highlighted through different villages. Each of the Spanish villages has various restaurants, ice cream shops and shopping , all in each region's architectural style. In one region, I was able to go to a glass blowing seminar where I found Guy Fieri! Guy was filming a new segment for his show Travel Guides.
Olympic Stadium
The olympic stadium was a region in Barcelona used for the 1992 olympic games. One of the coolest parts of the whole stadium is an iconic telecommunication’s tower for the games video traffic. Another cool part is the stadium was converted into a live, “ Day in an Olympian” activity called Open Camp. Open Camp is a program where people come and do various olympics events to get the true olympic’s experience.
Child Fire Run
The fire run is the highlight of the La Merce festival. During this run people dress up as devils and run around with very big sparklers. These sparklers were huge and their sparks would reach over the whole crowd of the street. While the event was happening, it sounded as if bombs were going off since each sparkler had a popper at the end. Overall, this event was awesome to see the sparks flying and an unique event!
Food
The food in Barcelona was amazing. I had paella two times during my visit and each was fantastic. One of the paella had a mix of calamari, crawfish and shrimp while the other had more vegetables and spices. Aside from the paella, I also had an awesome sandwich with prosciutto and fresh mozzarella. At the end of that meal, since I was able to speak the little Italian I know, the chief gave me a fresh slice of the porchetta(Italian Spiced Pig) straight from the pig! As for dessert, I had some great oreo gelato and cream filled croissants!
Check back next week for my next adventure!
Check back next week for my next adventure!
