From an email on Friday:
Today was pretty normal. I met with my advisor though and found out my over arching goal of this summer. The goal is to write a paper (with Felipe) synthesizing all of the muon detectors from each of the 4 main experiments on the LHC. We will describe each of the types of detectors and also give information about the gas mixtures that are used and the ionization energies and "cross sections" and lots of stuff. Now that I have a specific goal, I think I will be able to accomplish more than when I was just mindlessly testing cables and screwing screws.
This evening, Zach and Tina and I went to a party that a lot of the Summer students were having. It was between some buildings way at the bottom of CERN and it was pretty fun. I met people from all over the world with so many different accents. I mostly just talked with whatever group Zack was in, but also a little by myself. I probably met 15 or 20 people, which is really good for me. I bet I'll only remember 5-10 of the names by the morning though. Anyway, there wasn't music with speakers or anything, so most of the time, it was just people talking and sometimes people singing random songs and immitating accents. Another important part of the evening was when some people were trying to open a wine bottle without a cork screw... They were trying with a butter knife which wasn't working and then they tried with Zack's multitool. Cameron stupidly was using the knife part, which doesn't lock open, and put a huge gash in his finger! He went to the hospital to get it fixed. He then showed up later, but was bummed he had to miss so much of it. After that opening fail, they tried the banging the wine on the building in a shoe trick. They started by banging on a shed and then on another building, but then we saw a bunch of bees flying around and we thought for sure we had upset a hive or something. It turns out they were beetles, similar to june bugs and couldn't sting at all. They didn't often land on us, but when someone was brave enough to swat one out of the air, we were able to see it. It made it quite interesting for a while though. Anyway, you can google the shoe opening wine bottle trick if you are interested.
First of all, here are the pictures I have taken this last week. All but the first 3 were taken on Saturday when we hiked to the top of the Jura mountains in France which overlook Geneva, and on a clear day, all the way to the Alps. The first 3 pictures are from our lecture hall. I just thought it was awesome that they have a Rolex wall clock. This is in the main auditorium where they announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson last year on July 4th. The desks are fancy and foldoutable and there is a microphone shared between 2 people.
On Saturday, Tina, Zack, Phil Rubin, and I went on a long hike up the Jura mountains to Le Reculet, a cross monument on the top of the mountain. It is a metal structure which you will see pictures of near the end, and it was built in 1892. Each year, there is a huge hike up the mountain by all of the town people in Toiry, to the cross. There was a 10 mile bike ride and then about a 7 or 8 mile round trip hike to the top and back, gaining 4200 feet in elevation. The next day I was quite sore.
This was a steep part of the trail near the beginning of the hike. The forest is so dense it almost seems jungle-y at times!
This is a view from one of the first stopping points on the way up. It is at a place called Tiocan. There is a lodge and some picnic tables and such. We stopped here and Tina had a protein bar, since she was really low on energy from her low carb diet.
I brought my AU Eagles pepclub T-shirt for the photo contest, so in lots of hiking pictures and pictures around here, I will have it on and hopefully submit a good one for the final due in August.
2/3rds of the way up, we were greeted by this huge grassy bowl. It was quite a surprise as we had just been hiking through a bunch of trees until that point.
Of course I needed a picture in front of those swiss cows! It was just as I pictured those type of cows in my head.
Another bowl that we walked through. We then headed up the side of the bowl under some cliffs towards the saddle. When we were still down in the bowl, I spotted a brown animal up near the cliffs. It bounded right up them, so we think it was one of the mountain goats/sheep/antellope/deer things that Rubin was talking about. PS, it was cloudy near the top of the mountains so we never got a good view of the Alps and often, the Jura themselves were covered and we walked quite near the clouds.
The cliff, and a cave that was just off it.
A somewhat clear view of Le Reculet.
This was looking towards France left along the ridge.
Here is to the right looking towards France along the ridge. I took a video directly towards France, but no pictures for some reason. As you can see from the previous two pictures, the clounds were quite close. They actually filled in right after these pictures and we couldn't see down into France as well from this point onward.
This was a romantic French couple that was just being cute and making me jealous, so I thought I would share them with the rest of the world. (not sure if this is legal, but they won't ever read this blog and you couldn't even determine who they were from this picture if you tried!)
As we arrived at the top, there were probably 15-20 people there eating and resting a bit before they continued their journeys. We had lunch here about 2. It was one of the most deserved lunches I have had in a long time!
Me and Le Reculet.
Me climbing Le Reculet. Also, the "t" is silent since it is French...
Here is a road that follows the ridge for a long ways. This would be where you would hike to "hike the Jura" similar to hiking the Appalachian Trail.
This is a picture of CERN from far above it. It is the little triangle patch of buildings that this picture is centered on.
Me on the left, then Tina, then Zack. It was quite a fun hike.
Aww... Look at those cute raven/crow couples.... (It reminded me of Amy also)
More Swiss cows.
This was a pretty good view of the Geneva valley and the lake. To the far right, you can see where the river cuts through the mountains.
I'm not sure what breed of Cows these are, but I figured I could post them and my dad might know/appreciate the picture anyway.
Finally, this is the steep road that we hiked down. It was rock for some of the way and then breaking up pavement, so it was slippery at some points and quite steep.
Here is the approximate route and the elevation profile. We started hiking once we got to the trees!
Today (Sunday) I slept in a bit and then did my laundry. About 11:30, Zack and a group of our new friends from Friday, went to the beach. It is a small artificial beach on Lake Geneva, but it was really nice and has soft sand in the water. I thought since it was Switzerland near the Alps that the water would be frigid, but it was quite bearable on the sunny day. We went with kids from Sweden, Finland, England, Scottland, Ireand, Greece, and several more that I can't quite remember. After that, we went to an English Bar for the Wimbledon Final. The guy from Scottland actually won, so it was good. The food here is so expensive. The burgers were 20CHF and there were 7 onion rings for 9 CHF. The Sampler platter was 20 CHF, so I thought that might be a good deal, so I got that. (It said serves 3). It had 3 small cheese sticks, 3 wings, 3 small onion rings, and 3 small chicken Terryaki kebobs. Everything was quite delicious, but I ate it all and could have had another easily without gorgeing myself. Oh well, I guess I will make more use of the grocery stores again... This evening, Zack, Katelyn, Alex S and I played cards with the two Scottish people and a couple others wer met. We played variations of poker. One is called liar's poker, where you look at your hand and bet on the highest that anyone can make with all the hands combined. Then you have to go around increasing the power of the things you call until someone doubts you and everyone lays down their cards to see if the sum of everyones cards can create the hand. If all the cards cant make what you claimed, you get one fewer cards the next hand. You keep going like this until everyone but one person runs out of cards. It was quite fun. Then we played "indian poker." Super late now. More to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment