This will most likely be my last or second to last post on this web address.
My last week was pretty good. I didn't to a lot of actual research this week, partially because my working team left and because I was just too excited to go home. I know it is a little out of character, since I essentially gave up several days early, but I didn't waste too much time. I was also working on my paper this past week and studying for the GRE. Aside from the studying and report writing, I also have endulged in a lot of ice cream eating.
Recently, I discovered that I am addicted to ice cream! It was fairly subtle at first, since I would just have a chocolate caramel magnum ice cream bar once every other day or so, but then, I started to eat about one per day and sometimes even 2! On the days when I felt particularly bad about myself for eating so much ice cream, I would have a berry ice cream bar instead of the rich chocolate and caramel one. This weekend, I discovered Movenpick, a swiss ice cream place. They are expensive, but I kept justifying it by saying that I would only be in Switzerland for a week more. I had the triple scoop 3 times in the last 5 days! It is so delicious though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6venpick_Ice_Cream The best kinds are Creme Brulee, Swiss Chocolate, which has fine delicious chocolate shavings in the rich chocolate ice cream, Cappuccino, and Rum Raisin. Amaretto Almond and Espresso were probably better than any ben and Jerry's I've had, but were definitely not as good as the other flavors. One day, after eating some ice cream, I had a fondue dinner with the rest of the GMU clan and ate some gellato after dinner!
Needless to say, I will have to go through withdrawals when I come back to Montana. I am also proud to announce that I have been clean from ice cream for 26 hours!
Ok, now I will go back to my everyday life. This past weekend, was the big Fete de Geneve festival, and they have a super awesome firework display. The area down by the lake has been filled with carnival type booths and food booths for several weeks, but this weekend was the main weekend! Zack and Alex S and I went down to a flea market on Saturday afternoon to look around. There were quite a few books and other things you would find in a flea market, but nothing I needed aside from a super sweet dessert fork that has an extra thick side tine that is sharp on the edge for cutting things. That is usually how I eat my food anyway, so I thought it would be perfect to have a fork that was made specifically for it. It is like a spork, except more useful (for me)!
After the flea market, Zack and I went to hang out in the shade and read/talk for a while, while waiting for the fireworks at 10. We ended up going to the fireworks at about 7 and found a nice spot on the bridge to watch from. (the fireworks are shot from the middle of lake Geneva) The firework launch pads were set up in a "V" shape and we got a seat that was pointed to by the V. There was also a huge speaker system in the middle of the lake to play music while the fireworks were going.
We sat there and eventually the bridge got quite packed. Zacks friend met us there about an hour before they started and we talked about planes and stuff. I learned of the super huge plane that has a 97.5 meter wing spand.
Then, at 10, the fireworks finally started. The first part of the show was dedicated to Portuguese music and had different music genres with different fireworks assiciated with each. A Portuguese pyrotechnic created this part of the show. The second half had the theme of conquerers or something like that, and it had a really awesome sound track intermixed with some vocal audio describing some wars or conflicts that they were portraying. Basically, the fireworks were really awesome especially since they had them shooting from lots of different places. The music also made it so much better. It was by far the best fireworks I have seen, though I haven't seen more than the ones in Butte in recent memory.
Taken from an email:
"After my editing one afternoon, I headed to the beach so get a little sun, since I haven't been outside much in the last 3 days. I had a nice walk down there and then decided that since this is my last time in Switzerland for quite a while, I might as well spend a little more than I usually would to have a little better time. So.... I wandered all around the "Georgetown" of Geneva where all the Louis Vitton and Rolex and all those super expensive stores are. The purpose of my wandering was to simply find an ATM, but it took me probably 40 minutes, or it seemed like that long anyway. I finally found a bank and then I headed to the Movenpick that we went to the last time. This time I got rum raisin and swiss chocolate and creme brulee! The first two I knew were good, but creme brulee was also really good! I wandered around eatime my ice cream and then went to a tram stop that was near the Ice cream place. There were some young street performers there riding unicycles while picking up the girl and balancing and flips and stuff. It was pretty cool. It looked like it took a lot of practice, but they still weren't perfect. I gave them a little money for all their effort though.
While I was sitting on the bench, some Mormon missionary girls talked to me. One was from Germany and one from France. I felt bad for them trying to mission to the secular masses of Switzerland, so I agreed to meet them tomorrow to talk more. I also want to ask what it is like for them here in Europe. I am desperate to find things to do to use up the time while I am waiting to come home."
Then, the following day:
"Today, I went into town to talk to those Mormon girls I met yesterday. They were interesting to talk to. It seems to me that they don't do much questioning about religion. They seemed rather matter of fact about everything. They also seem to emphasize that theirs is the one true church. One girl was 24 and from Germany. She was at Provo for 2 months before she did her mission. The other one is a French girl and she went to Spain for her training. She learned the French one, since they are stationed here, so she didn't know how to say some of the religious things they say in their talks in English, but they tried their best. Before the meeting during the day, I read up a lot about our church's history and when we split and some of the differences so I would be prepared to talk to them. I knew more about the initial history of their church than they did it seemed. Anyway, that was an interesting way to spend an hour. After the meeting is when I got the ice cream!"
From above, it may have sounded like they were hard to talk to, but it was actually quite interesting and fun. Just when it came to hearing what they had to say, they were quite convinced that they were right.
OK, I'm sorry this post was quite out of order, but it will have to do. Tomorrow I am leaving Switzerland at 11:45am. I get home finally at 9:24 pm after having lost 8 hours during my travel. My plan is to get a lot of sleep tonight so I can be awake and intelligible when I meet Amy at the airport. I'm so excited. Anyway, I'm going to play cards for a little while before hitting the hay.
I will try to add pictures from the fireworks and my last bit of time here sometime, but I thought I would get the words finished, since I'm not sure how much time I will have in the coming weeks.
Thank you to those who have read my blog. I hope it has kept you sufficiently entertained/informed.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Mr. Kinzer's Trip to CERN
Hello all!
The reason this post wasn't on Sunday is that I wanted to put all of Mr. Kinzer's trip on one post.
For those who don't know, Mr. Kinzer was my high school Chemistry and Physics teacher. He has been teaching there for about 38 years. He taught my mom and her siblings and many other people! He was/is an awesome teacher who makes you put in effort and learn, but he also puts in the effort to make that possible. He is usually at school before 7 am even though it starts after 8. He stays after school grading and planning and can help you then sometimes too. Anyway, my mom organized a fund raiser of sorts to send him to CERN so he could see everything here as a small repayment of all that he has done for the Whitehall community.
My week aside from his visit wasn't terribly exciting, but I will describe those parts as they happen.
First, on Thursday last week, I went to the airport to get him and show him around a bit. We met at the airport and got his rental car. It was lucky that his hotel was close by, since we couldn't quite get the GPS to work at first. His hotel was less than a mile from the airport. He got all checked in there, and then I showed him how to get to CERN on the tram. He got a free Geneva public transportation pass with the hotel, which was nice. I snook him in the side door and we ate at R1. We had some soup and bread for super cheap, which was good. After that, we walked around a while, but I didn't know too much of what to say or show him, since this is my first time here too. I pointed out some main things, but was hoping that Phil would give him a better tour later. I showed him how to get home and then went back to work for the afternoon.
On Friday, we had our big CMS tour. We met in building 33, the welcome center place, where we were given a small lecture aimed at not so scientific people. It was pretty interesting, since they told us about the operation and history of CERN. Then, he went into the standard model a little bit, but it wasn't too detailed.
After this talk, we loaded on a shuttle bus and took a ride to the Prevessin site, where they showed us the operating building that receives information from the AMS, a particle detector which is attached to the Internation Space Station. They had a model and told us a little bit about the operation. Instead of having the super conducting magnets, they have permanent magnets since there is not much power up there. The entire detector was made to run on about as much power as a hair dryer. They had this huge screen like you see in the movies that has a back projector and is touch sensitive. It was see through until they wanted to use it. It was really cool.
After that short description, we went on another 20 minutes drive to the opposite side of the LHC to point 5 where the CMS is located. There, we were divided into different groups and got some hard hats so we could go down to the actual detector. Since the LHC is in shut down mode while they make upgrades, we were able to actually tour down to the detector, which we wouldn't have been able to do if it was still running because of the radiation and other factors. We first looked in the control room which has so many screens. I even saw the muon system control center. That is interesting to me, because that is what we have been working on. After that we went into this huge equipment elevator and went down the 100 meters to where the detector actually is. We walked up to it and took some pictures. It was really cool to see it, but the pictures that you can see online are much better since you could only go up to the side of it and you couldn't see it from the end. It was pretty neat though, because where one spot was split apart, I could see lots of muon detectors, some of them even the type that I saw made at the Prevessin side. This was the only time that I got a picture of Mr. Kinzer with his permission. He doesn't seem like the type of person who would want to get pictures taken of him, so I felt pretty lucky.
After the tour, we went back to R1 and had lunch. Then we made plans for meeting on Saturday morning to go to Lyon and he left.
On Saturday morning, Alex S., Zack and I caught the 6:40 tram (barely, we had to run all the way from the hostel) and made it it to his hotel at about 6:52. We waited in the lobby until he came down, but he snook out the side door and we missed him. We eventually went back out to the car and left by about 7:10. It was interesting driving with Mr. Kinzer. He was pretty brave for driving and listening to the GPS and us; he doesn't even like driving too much. The GPS gave us some trouble, moreso the next day, but anyway, it would sometimes say stay left, as opposed to turning right, but then we would be in a left turn lane and would get off course. There were several times like this and we ended up going through two airport parking lots on the way back on Saturday. It wasn't the GPSs fault entirely though that time, since the address didn't work, but we didn;t realize that you could just search for the hotel in "points of interest."
We had a pretty drive to Lyon, which was about 1:40 from Geneva over in France. We headed to the Gallo-Roman ruins and looked at the amphitheater. It was built right around year 0, and it was really cool. It was also up on a hill, so you could see over Lyon and all of the old small streets and buildings that used to make up down town. The theater would have seated about 11000 people total. It would have been amazing to be back in that time and to see everything that was there. After wandering around the 2 amphitheaters for about an hour (one smaller one was for music performances), we went to the Museum. There they had old coins from that time, so many large rocks and sculptures and even a large bronze tablet that had emperor Claudius's speech to the senate. There was even a water pump and some of the lead pipes that were used in that time period. Their aquaduct system was so expansive, it carried 40,000 cubic meters of water to the City each day. There museum itself was built into the hillside next to the amphitheatres and was about 3 stories tall, winding down the whole way, you would walk to one end and then back down to the other, like a really long squished spiral stair case minus the stairs. We had audio tour guides, that you just type the number and it plays some audio related to the artifacts you were looking at. It was a neat museum.
After this, it was about 12:45 so we headed down into the Old town to get some food from the Gastronomical capital of France (Lyon). There were so many restaurants that looked good in the streets, but we eventually settled on one that had a 3 course meal for 15 euro ($21 or so). It was really good. Since we weren't French, we didn't get served that quickly, but it was alright, because we weren't in a hurry at all anyway. (seriously though, we watched several people who came after us, finish 3 courses and leave before we were close to getting done) It came with some good bread and for the first course, I had some French Onion Soup. It was quite creamy and light colored, but did have a similar flavor to the stuff we make chip dip with. Zack and Alex Sherman wanted to try escargot, so they ordered some of those. Mr. Kinzer was making a big deal about how it was gross, which was funny, but he eventually gave in and tried one too. Then he said that his wife would be so grossed out when he emailed her that he had eaten a snail! They were quite similar to Mussels, but worse, so I only had one and don't need any more for quite while. For the second course, we had some type of sausage, lentils, and a chopped vegetable mixture. Then for dessert, they brought out another menu and there wer no descriptions and the names were things like "floating island", or "Saint somebodyrother," but I wasn't adventurous and just stuck with the creme brulle since I knew it would be good. It was really really good and Alex sherman got a piece of cheese with some bread and a few green leaves, and Zack got this bowl of something similar to sour cream, so I was quite happy in my choice, since I wanted something sweet to finish off my meal.
After our great meal, we walked around (old town) Veaux Lyon, for a while and then went down to the river. It was a large muddy river and definitely not as nice as when the rhone comes out of lake Geneva. We went into two large cathedrals, one by the river, and one up on the hill near the amphitheaters. The first one was built in the 1400 and 1500s and was not quite as Catholic looking inside (without all of the gold haloed angels and saints and such). The first one was also bigger, so I liked it better, I think.
We were planning on going to see some awesome fireworks in Annecy, but Mr. Kinzer said he didn't want to drive in the dark, so we changed our mind and came straight home after Lyon. We got home at about 7 or so, since we got lost near the airport, since we couldn't program in the directions to the hotel, only the address of the airport. After about 25 minutes of wandering around and going through 2 airport parking lots, we finally made it back to the hotel.
We (Alex, Zack, and I) then went home and ate a little food and went to R1 to play cards and "contact," a word game (now also with Alex F.). We then went into Geneva and walked by the lake. They are having the hugest festival all around the lake and when we were walking, we saw a lot of people sitting and waiting. We thought there must be some fireworks, and we eventually found a sign that said they started at 10:30 (we got there around 10:10). There are so many booths with drinks and food and candy, and there are even several rides and such. In total, there were about 1.4 miles of booths linig both sides of the lake. There were many people that it was quite slow walking.
Our goal for the night was to walk out by the Jet d'eau, since Alex S. hadn't been out to it yet. We walked as far as we could before the fireworks started, but then we stopped to watch. They were pretty awesome fireworks, but not as big as the ones in Butte I'm pretty sure. They launch them from a platform in the middle of the lake. There were some pretty ones that left a trail of sparks as they went up and then there was a shower of flashier bright pieces that came off too. It was so pretty. There were also double artilery shells that made a big explosion and then after the pieces had made it out quite far, they exploded in small mini artilery shell fashion. Those two were probably my favorite. After the fireworks we made it to the Jet D'eau, but it was a litte different wind than when I was there and we got completely soaked. It was awesome though, like running through a really strong rain storm, then after you went past it, it was dry and calm. It was also dark which made it pretty intense with the wind and water on the small pierre, blowing you towards the edge.
After we got soaked, Alex F. wanted to get some change since he only had a 20 and the tram pass machines don't give change. He went to this candy booth and loaded up a bag a little bit, and then paid with the 20 and only got 2 CHF in change... That wasn't right! He took out some candy and ended up with 10 in change. It was ~$25/lb candy! We walked back with our wet clothes to the tram stop and then made it home.
On Sunday, we got a late start since we wanted to sleep in a bit, but Zack and I eventually made it down to the Holiday Inn Express and met Mr. Kinzer. We drove back past Chamonix, like the previous weekend and this time went to the actual place from which you would hike Mont Buet. It was a pretty decent hike, but not too hard. We hiked up a valley, past Berard water falls, and up to the Refuge du Berard, which was another hut, that you could stay at and buy food. From the hut, we saw the peak of Mont Buet, but we hadn't left early enough for that, and Mr. Kinzer wasn't up for it. It was a really pretty hike, but the pictures wouldn't have been as nice as the ones I already took, so I didn't take as many of the blue shirt and me.
We drove home and then the Alexes, Zack and I went to Nirvana, an Indian restaurant that was close to CERN. It was pretty expensive, but we justified it since we had traveled a lot and Mr. Kinzer wouldn't take much money for it. The entrees were about 25 CHF, and then it was an extra 6 CHF for a little bowl of Basmati rice, and 5 CHF for some naan. It was really good food, possibly the best Indian food I have eaten, but still, 30 CHF, and I wasn't even full! They had 2900 CHF bottles of wine on their menu to! After dinner, Alex S., Zack, and I went back into Geneva to walk around.
On Monday, I got quite a bit done on my paper, and was on a roll, so I didn't meet Mr. Kinzer, but it was alright.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kinzer, got a tour from Phil Rubin of the Meyrin site of CERN. I think he enjoyed that a lot. He saw the birth place of the internet and other things. I met him at 5:30 and I took him down to the river confluence. We walked all the way there from the tram station, and then we walked all around the Fete de Geneve. There were 5 bumper car booths and lots of spinny type rides and some that went really high. It is quite the scene. In the restaurant area, there were different types of music, and fancy non-permanent lounge places for people to drink wine. We even saw this western place with a fake bucking bronco. It was funny. After walking around for 3.5 hours, I headed home and made some dinner since I was quite hungry.
Today, was pretty normal, I ran some simulations and wrote more on the paper. I also played cards in the evening with everyone from GMU except Tina. We played the fun version of BS and also Pinochle and spoons. They are a fun group of people:)
Here are a lot of pictures. Since I described most everything above, I will just post the pictures. If you have any questions, just leave me a comment and I will reply as soon as I notice it!
The reason this post wasn't on Sunday is that I wanted to put all of Mr. Kinzer's trip on one post.
For those who don't know, Mr. Kinzer was my high school Chemistry and Physics teacher. He has been teaching there for about 38 years. He taught my mom and her siblings and many other people! He was/is an awesome teacher who makes you put in effort and learn, but he also puts in the effort to make that possible. He is usually at school before 7 am even though it starts after 8. He stays after school grading and planning and can help you then sometimes too. Anyway, my mom organized a fund raiser of sorts to send him to CERN so he could see everything here as a small repayment of all that he has done for the Whitehall community.
My week aside from his visit wasn't terribly exciting, but I will describe those parts as they happen.
First, on Thursday last week, I went to the airport to get him and show him around a bit. We met at the airport and got his rental car. It was lucky that his hotel was close by, since we couldn't quite get the GPS to work at first. His hotel was less than a mile from the airport. He got all checked in there, and then I showed him how to get to CERN on the tram. He got a free Geneva public transportation pass with the hotel, which was nice. I snook him in the side door and we ate at R1. We had some soup and bread for super cheap, which was good. After that, we walked around a while, but I didn't know too much of what to say or show him, since this is my first time here too. I pointed out some main things, but was hoping that Phil would give him a better tour later. I showed him how to get home and then went back to work for the afternoon.
On Friday, we had our big CMS tour. We met in building 33, the welcome center place, where we were given a small lecture aimed at not so scientific people. It was pretty interesting, since they told us about the operation and history of CERN. Then, he went into the standard model a little bit, but it wasn't too detailed.
After this talk, we loaded on a shuttle bus and took a ride to the Prevessin site, where they showed us the operating building that receives information from the AMS, a particle detector which is attached to the Internation Space Station. They had a model and told us a little bit about the operation. Instead of having the super conducting magnets, they have permanent magnets since there is not much power up there. The entire detector was made to run on about as much power as a hair dryer. They had this huge screen like you see in the movies that has a back projector and is touch sensitive. It was see through until they wanted to use it. It was really cool.
After that short description, we went on another 20 minutes drive to the opposite side of the LHC to point 5 where the CMS is located. There, we were divided into different groups and got some hard hats so we could go down to the actual detector. Since the LHC is in shut down mode while they make upgrades, we were able to actually tour down to the detector, which we wouldn't have been able to do if it was still running because of the radiation and other factors. We first looked in the control room which has so many screens. I even saw the muon system control center. That is interesting to me, because that is what we have been working on. After that we went into this huge equipment elevator and went down the 100 meters to where the detector actually is. We walked up to it and took some pictures. It was really cool to see it, but the pictures that you can see online are much better since you could only go up to the side of it and you couldn't see it from the end. It was pretty neat though, because where one spot was split apart, I could see lots of muon detectors, some of them even the type that I saw made at the Prevessin side. This was the only time that I got a picture of Mr. Kinzer with his permission. He doesn't seem like the type of person who would want to get pictures taken of him, so I felt pretty lucky.
After the tour, we went back to R1 and had lunch. Then we made plans for meeting on Saturday morning to go to Lyon and he left.
On Saturday morning, Alex S., Zack and I caught the 6:40 tram (barely, we had to run all the way from the hostel) and made it it to his hotel at about 6:52. We waited in the lobby until he came down, but he snook out the side door and we missed him. We eventually went back out to the car and left by about 7:10. It was interesting driving with Mr. Kinzer. He was pretty brave for driving and listening to the GPS and us; he doesn't even like driving too much. The GPS gave us some trouble, moreso the next day, but anyway, it would sometimes say stay left, as opposed to turning right, but then we would be in a left turn lane and would get off course. There were several times like this and we ended up going through two airport parking lots on the way back on Saturday. It wasn't the GPSs fault entirely though that time, since the address didn't work, but we didn;t realize that you could just search for the hotel in "points of interest."
We had a pretty drive to Lyon, which was about 1:40 from Geneva over in France. We headed to the Gallo-Roman ruins and looked at the amphitheater. It was built right around year 0, and it was really cool. It was also up on a hill, so you could see over Lyon and all of the old small streets and buildings that used to make up down town. The theater would have seated about 11000 people total. It would have been amazing to be back in that time and to see everything that was there. After wandering around the 2 amphitheaters for about an hour (one smaller one was for music performances), we went to the Museum. There they had old coins from that time, so many large rocks and sculptures and even a large bronze tablet that had emperor Claudius's speech to the senate. There was even a water pump and some of the lead pipes that were used in that time period. Their aquaduct system was so expansive, it carried 40,000 cubic meters of water to the City each day. There museum itself was built into the hillside next to the amphitheatres and was about 3 stories tall, winding down the whole way, you would walk to one end and then back down to the other, like a really long squished spiral stair case minus the stairs. We had audio tour guides, that you just type the number and it plays some audio related to the artifacts you were looking at. It was a neat museum.
After this, it was about 12:45 so we headed down into the Old town to get some food from the Gastronomical capital of France (Lyon). There were so many restaurants that looked good in the streets, but we eventually settled on one that had a 3 course meal for 15 euro ($21 or so). It was really good. Since we weren't French, we didn't get served that quickly, but it was alright, because we weren't in a hurry at all anyway. (seriously though, we watched several people who came after us, finish 3 courses and leave before we were close to getting done) It came with some good bread and for the first course, I had some French Onion Soup. It was quite creamy and light colored, but did have a similar flavor to the stuff we make chip dip with. Zack and Alex Sherman wanted to try escargot, so they ordered some of those. Mr. Kinzer was making a big deal about how it was gross, which was funny, but he eventually gave in and tried one too. Then he said that his wife would be so grossed out when he emailed her that he had eaten a snail! They were quite similar to Mussels, but worse, so I only had one and don't need any more for quite while. For the second course, we had some type of sausage, lentils, and a chopped vegetable mixture. Then for dessert, they brought out another menu and there wer no descriptions and the names were things like "floating island", or "Saint somebodyrother," but I wasn't adventurous and just stuck with the creme brulle since I knew it would be good. It was really really good and Alex sherman got a piece of cheese with some bread and a few green leaves, and Zack got this bowl of something similar to sour cream, so I was quite happy in my choice, since I wanted something sweet to finish off my meal.
After our great meal, we walked around (old town) Veaux Lyon, for a while and then went down to the river. It was a large muddy river and definitely not as nice as when the rhone comes out of lake Geneva. We went into two large cathedrals, one by the river, and one up on the hill near the amphitheaters. The first one was built in the 1400 and 1500s and was not quite as Catholic looking inside (without all of the gold haloed angels and saints and such). The first one was also bigger, so I liked it better, I think.
We were planning on going to see some awesome fireworks in Annecy, but Mr. Kinzer said he didn't want to drive in the dark, so we changed our mind and came straight home after Lyon. We got home at about 7 or so, since we got lost near the airport, since we couldn't program in the directions to the hotel, only the address of the airport. After about 25 minutes of wandering around and going through 2 airport parking lots, we finally made it back to the hotel.
We (Alex, Zack, and I) then went home and ate a little food and went to R1 to play cards and "contact," a word game (now also with Alex F.). We then went into Geneva and walked by the lake. They are having the hugest festival all around the lake and when we were walking, we saw a lot of people sitting and waiting. We thought there must be some fireworks, and we eventually found a sign that said they started at 10:30 (we got there around 10:10). There are so many booths with drinks and food and candy, and there are even several rides and such. In total, there were about 1.4 miles of booths linig both sides of the lake. There were many people that it was quite slow walking.
Our goal for the night was to walk out by the Jet d'eau, since Alex S. hadn't been out to it yet. We walked as far as we could before the fireworks started, but then we stopped to watch. They were pretty awesome fireworks, but not as big as the ones in Butte I'm pretty sure. They launch them from a platform in the middle of the lake. There were some pretty ones that left a trail of sparks as they went up and then there was a shower of flashier bright pieces that came off too. It was so pretty. There were also double artilery shells that made a big explosion and then after the pieces had made it out quite far, they exploded in small mini artilery shell fashion. Those two were probably my favorite. After the fireworks we made it to the Jet D'eau, but it was a litte different wind than when I was there and we got completely soaked. It was awesome though, like running through a really strong rain storm, then after you went past it, it was dry and calm. It was also dark which made it pretty intense with the wind and water on the small pierre, blowing you towards the edge.
After we got soaked, Alex F. wanted to get some change since he only had a 20 and the tram pass machines don't give change. He went to this candy booth and loaded up a bag a little bit, and then paid with the 20 and only got 2 CHF in change... That wasn't right! He took out some candy and ended up with 10 in change. It was ~$25/lb candy! We walked back with our wet clothes to the tram stop and then made it home.
On Sunday, we got a late start since we wanted to sleep in a bit, but Zack and I eventually made it down to the Holiday Inn Express and met Mr. Kinzer. We drove back past Chamonix, like the previous weekend and this time went to the actual place from which you would hike Mont Buet. It was a pretty decent hike, but not too hard. We hiked up a valley, past Berard water falls, and up to the Refuge du Berard, which was another hut, that you could stay at and buy food. From the hut, we saw the peak of Mont Buet, but we hadn't left early enough for that, and Mr. Kinzer wasn't up for it. It was a really pretty hike, but the pictures wouldn't have been as nice as the ones I already took, so I didn't take as many of the blue shirt and me.
We drove home and then the Alexes, Zack and I went to Nirvana, an Indian restaurant that was close to CERN. It was pretty expensive, but we justified it since we had traveled a lot and Mr. Kinzer wouldn't take much money for it. The entrees were about 25 CHF, and then it was an extra 6 CHF for a little bowl of Basmati rice, and 5 CHF for some naan. It was really good food, possibly the best Indian food I have eaten, but still, 30 CHF, and I wasn't even full! They had 2900 CHF bottles of wine on their menu to! After dinner, Alex S., Zack, and I went back into Geneva to walk around.
On Monday, I got quite a bit done on my paper, and was on a roll, so I didn't meet Mr. Kinzer, but it was alright.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kinzer, got a tour from Phil Rubin of the Meyrin site of CERN. I think he enjoyed that a lot. He saw the birth place of the internet and other things. I met him at 5:30 and I took him down to the river confluence. We walked all the way there from the tram station, and then we walked all around the Fete de Geneve. There were 5 bumper car booths and lots of spinny type rides and some that went really high. It is quite the scene. In the restaurant area, there were different types of music, and fancy non-permanent lounge places for people to drink wine. We even saw this western place with a fake bucking bronco. It was funny. After walking around for 3.5 hours, I headed home and made some dinner since I was quite hungry.
Today, was pretty normal, I ran some simulations and wrote more on the paper. I also played cards in the evening with everyone from GMU except Tina. We played the fun version of BS and also Pinochle and spoons. They are a fun group of people:)
Here are a lot of pictures. Since I described most everything above, I will just post the pictures. If you have any questions, just leave me a comment and I will reply as soon as I notice it!
Well, that is all! Goodnight!
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Project Progress and a Hike in the Alps
Hello all! It is time for a new weekly blog post. Today was a pretty great week for me here.
For the research, it started off a little shakey, because Shobhit, Felipe and I thought that we knew what we were supposed to do, but when Shobhit actually started making the plots, they weren't what we wanted them to be nor needed them to be, in order to obtain useful results. We met with Archana Sharma in the afternoon to discuss it. She told Felipe and I to use Garfield++ to make some plots of drift velocity, longitudinal and transverse diffusion, and Lorentz angles for various electric and magnetic fields each in our own gas mixtures. She told me to use Argon:Isobutane 95:5 (which is the percentage of the total gas mixture for each gas).
After the meeting, it seemed rather pointless for me to make these plots, because I'm sure someone else had done it before, but Felipe and I did it anyway, since we wanted to do something and that was all we knew how to do at the moment. We used an example Garfield++ file (which is the Garfield simulation software I was talking about before, but it is written in the programming language C++) and then adjusted the gas mixtures, electric fields ranges over which the simulation would run, the magnetic fields, and the angle between them. The different angle effects the motion of the electrons which were simulated, because a charge moving through a magnetic field experiences a magnetic force proportional to its speed and the sine of the angle between the motion and magnetic field. So, the electric field force will be somewhat counteracted by the magnetic field, causing the electrons not to drift exactly along the electric field, but rather at some angle to the electric field (and also the plates which have the applied voltage). This is called the Lorentz angle.
The program itself simulates the drift of many electrons in order to calculate an average drift velocity, which depends on the forces applied and the medium, in this case Argon:Isobutane 95:5. It has to track the motion of each electron through space for the entire distance and therefore requires many many calculations and a lot of time. For several of the simulations I ran, I had to leave my computer on and running the simulations all through the night. One of the simulations required about 36 hours (though I divided it up by letting each terminal send a specific part of the job to the server). In order to record all of the data that appeared in the terminal and was then pushed off the top of the window by new incoming results, I wrote a .txt file with all of the information that I could then go through later to sift out the useful results. After inputting this information into Excel, I created several useful graphs in the 3 days of work. It finally feels like I have done something useful!
Aside from the simulations and analysis, I also went to the beach on Friday during the day (while it was still hot and sunny). Don't worry, I stilly made up for the skipped work by working until 8:30 pm or so after I got back. I just thought that since I wasn't really working with anyone that I might as well make use of the beautiful sunny day!
On Saturday, Zack and both Alexs and I went for a long hike in the Alps. In short, it was awesome, and here are some pictures to document our journey! First, we woke up really early and left here at 6:25 am to catch the tram to the Airport. We had set up a rental car from Hertz and we picked it up at 7am. There was a little trouble, since aparently you have to have credit card in order to rent it (a debit card doesn't work). So, the person who had organized everything with the car couldn't actually rent it, so Zack ended up renting it and driving. We had tried to use the GPS and print off maps, but there were so many clear road signs that we were ablt to make it to the hiking place about an hour away with no trouble.
Here is my first picture from the road. It was interesting to ride in France, but not too much different from the US. Definitely more traffic circles though.
We had looked up the directions to hike Mont Buet, which is near to Mont Blanc and has a good view of it, and we eventually found a route that we liked and that we thought would work. On our way to the trailhead, we passed a hiking area, but I was fairly sure that the trailhead we wanted was further, but since we didn't have a GPS, I wasn't sure at all. We only had a map with the large towns labelled along with the road. We drove a little ways further, but then didn't see what I thought we should, so we decided to go back to the trail we saw. Here are some pictures of the beginning of the trail. It started out with about 1.5 miles of switch backs. Then, there was another 1.5 miles of flatter straight trails up to the lake pictured 3 pictures below.
We knew that we were heading to Lac Blanc, which was a lake, so we though this one might be it, until we read the sign. We then headed up the ladders and up a steep trail until we reached the actual lake of final destination, Lac Blanc.
Next to the lake is a hotel/ restaurant that people can stay in when they go on big hikes. These types of huts are scattered throughout the Alps as resting places for people going on longer hikes.
I tried to get artsy with this picture... I realized that I think I want to take some photography classes or at least learn more about it. It would be nice to take better pictures. We arrived at the lake, but we were still hoping that Mont Buet was just above, and accessible, so we started to climb the ridge near Lac Blanc. It was pretty steep in quite a few places and required us to use our hands also. It was really fun.
Here is a picture with me and a glacier behing me.
Zack Siegel, Me, Alex Fragapane, and Alex Sherman at the top of one of the hills.
This perspective in this picture does not do justice to how terrifying this actually was. There was just a little rock ledge down there and after that, it was probably a 150 foot drop off. It was on the side of a cliff practically. Anyway, since you can't see how terrifying this was, I don't think I will submit it for the Chipotle challenge.
Here is me being like the beginning of lion king with my shirt, but it is too far away that you can't really see me or the shirt well. It was pretty high up though.
This just gives an idea of the terrain that we were climbing on. Eventually we got to where we couldn't avoid the snow, so we had to cross it, since staying on the rocks would mean crossing an 8 or 10 foot ravine leading to the cliffs mentioned before on the left.
Crossing the snow was pretty scary, since it was quite slick. If you slipped, you could slide all the way down further into the bowl, where it would be less steep, but there were some large rocks that you also might run into after you gained speed.
Another view of the terrain.
We eventually decied to slide down the snow. It was really fun. Kinda like skiing except you couldn't steer very well and it was mostly just trying not to lose your balance.
There is me making a snow angel. Again, definitely too far away to see the shirt, but I thought it was still a cool picture.
They told me to lay there and do a model pose, but I didn't know what to do, which is what I am motioning in this picture. "What do I do"
We thought it would be cool to make an AU for me to sit in for a picture, so we all tried to carve it out. It took some time though, because it was really slippery still and we had to make a special effort to avoid sliding and ruining the letters. 
Here is the best version of the photo of me in the AU. I think this will be one of the top contenders for the Chipotle. Everyone here is invested in making the best picture possible, because I said I would share my chipotle with them if I win.
I decided to take some more pictures on the way down because the lighting was better, so here are a couple more of the same scenery.
We saw another one of those wild goat things a lot closer than before. We also saw a giant hare type thing and a really big marmot relative.
Our car is down on that little D shape more than 1000 feet below. Just for some numbers, the total hike was about 8.5 miles and we gained almost 3700 feet of elevation. The steepest grade was 67% according to google earth, though I'm pretty sure up towards the top when we were bouldering, it was more than that.
Here, I only have my white shirt on, because Alex S reasoned with me that there was no way that this picture would beat all of my other AU ones, so there wasn't really a point of putting it on.
After the hike, we were all quite hungry so we went to a Microbrewery in Chamonix France. They had a good deal for a hamburger and pint of beer for only 10 Euros. The Hamburger was so big and juicy and good. I had a stout, which kinda tasted like coffee, but was really cold, so it was bearable. We also got some onion rings and waffle fries for 6.5 and 5 Euros respectively. It was so much of a better deal than Geneva!
For the research, it started off a little shakey, because Shobhit, Felipe and I thought that we knew what we were supposed to do, but when Shobhit actually started making the plots, they weren't what we wanted them to be nor needed them to be, in order to obtain useful results. We met with Archana Sharma in the afternoon to discuss it. She told Felipe and I to use Garfield++ to make some plots of drift velocity, longitudinal and transverse diffusion, and Lorentz angles for various electric and magnetic fields each in our own gas mixtures. She told me to use Argon:Isobutane 95:5 (which is the percentage of the total gas mixture for each gas).
After the meeting, it seemed rather pointless for me to make these plots, because I'm sure someone else had done it before, but Felipe and I did it anyway, since we wanted to do something and that was all we knew how to do at the moment. We used an example Garfield++ file (which is the Garfield simulation software I was talking about before, but it is written in the programming language C++) and then adjusted the gas mixtures, electric fields ranges over which the simulation would run, the magnetic fields, and the angle between them. The different angle effects the motion of the electrons which were simulated, because a charge moving through a magnetic field experiences a magnetic force proportional to its speed and the sine of the angle between the motion and magnetic field. So, the electric field force will be somewhat counteracted by the magnetic field, causing the electrons not to drift exactly along the electric field, but rather at some angle to the electric field (and also the plates which have the applied voltage). This is called the Lorentz angle.
The program itself simulates the drift of many electrons in order to calculate an average drift velocity, which depends on the forces applied and the medium, in this case Argon:Isobutane 95:5. It has to track the motion of each electron through space for the entire distance and therefore requires many many calculations and a lot of time. For several of the simulations I ran, I had to leave my computer on and running the simulations all through the night. One of the simulations required about 36 hours (though I divided it up by letting each terminal send a specific part of the job to the server). In order to record all of the data that appeared in the terminal and was then pushed off the top of the window by new incoming results, I wrote a .txt file with all of the information that I could then go through later to sift out the useful results. After inputting this information into Excel, I created several useful graphs in the 3 days of work. It finally feels like I have done something useful!
Aside from the simulations and analysis, I also went to the beach on Friday during the day (while it was still hot and sunny). Don't worry, I stilly made up for the skipped work by working until 8:30 pm or so after I got back. I just thought that since I wasn't really working with anyone that I might as well make use of the beautiful sunny day!
On Saturday, Zack and both Alexs and I went for a long hike in the Alps. In short, it was awesome, and here are some pictures to document our journey! First, we woke up really early and left here at 6:25 am to catch the tram to the Airport. We had set up a rental car from Hertz and we picked it up at 7am. There was a little trouble, since aparently you have to have credit card in order to rent it (a debit card doesn't work). So, the person who had organized everything with the car couldn't actually rent it, so Zack ended up renting it and driving. We had tried to use the GPS and print off maps, but there were so many clear road signs that we were ablt to make it to the hiking place about an hour away with no trouble.
We had looked up the directions to hike Mont Buet, which is near to Mont Blanc and has a good view of it, and we eventually found a route that we liked and that we thought would work. On our way to the trailhead, we passed a hiking area, but I was fairly sure that the trailhead we wanted was further, but since we didn't have a GPS, I wasn't sure at all. We only had a map with the large towns labelled along with the road. We drove a little ways further, but then didn't see what I thought we should, so we decided to go back to the trail we saw. Here are some pictures of the beginning of the trail. It started out with about 1.5 miles of switch backs. Then, there was another 1.5 miles of flatter straight trails up to the lake pictured 3 pictures below.
Here is the best version of the photo of me in the AU. I think this will be one of the top contenders for the Chipotle. Everyone here is invested in making the best picture possible, because I said I would share my chipotle with them if I win.
After all this, we were exhausted and didn't want to to much, so we just watched Taken 2 in one of the lounges. I have pretty bad sun burn, so am sore from that, and some other peoples muscles are sore, so we could tell that it must have been a good hike!
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