UK news from CERN
Issue 47: 29 July 2014
In this issue:
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Troubleshooting CERN – can this team fix it? Yes, they can!
Fast-track for high school teachers – a three week, intense, international experience
Feeding the creative process – working with CERN’s artist in residence
TEDxCERN is back! – is your organisation taking part?
Dates for the diary
Troubleshooting CERN
The latest in our series of articles about restarting the accelerator
complex.
If an alert goes off at CERN, it will almost
certainly show up on one of Chris Wetton’s 15
screens in the CERN Control Centre. Chris is a
member of the Technical Infrastructure
Operation group, an eight-strong team that
works 24/7 to monitor all the services for
CERN’s accelerator complex. Chris and his
colleagues rely on sensitive triggers throughout
the complex to send an alert as soon as any
deviation is detected so that it can be fixed
before anything significant goes wrong. At the
end of a busy shift, UKNFC caught up with Chris
to find out how the Long Shutdown (LS1) has
affected his team.
The bank of screens is intimidating – there are
screens with schematic diagrams and synoptics
of the electrical network, and on others there are
lines of text in different colours indicating the
priority level of an alert. These can be from
level zero (white/grey - information only) to three
(red - requiring immediate intervention from the
Fire Service). Fortunately there are no red lines
- the screens are mostly yellow indicating level
two technical issues, and after nearly 10 years
in the job, Chris was able to do a quick scan
across the screens and calmly assess what was
going on.
“We monitor everything from the fire alarms,
gas, heating and ventilation systems to the
evacuation systems and automatic doors,”
explains Chris. “If an alert goes off, we identity
the problem, and then we try to fix it.”
Chris and his bank of screens © S Hills
Sometimes an alert can be reset remotely, but
often it requires the shift operator to go on site.
CERN is spread across a wide geographic area
and the team needs an intimate knowledge of
each site, as well as each system. They
maintain a detailed database with information
about each system; where to find it, what it will
look like, common faults and how to fix them.
Sharing information is essential and there is
time reserved at the start/end of each shift to
pass on current information.
“Level two alerts are the most common during a
technical stop when people are working on the
machines. We need to know who is working
where, what they’re doing, and what alerts they
might trigger. Most people will call us up before
they start, but not always. When the
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Written and edited by Stephanie Hills, UK Communications and Innovation Officer @ CERN
Stephanie.hills@stfc.ac.uk or Stephanie.hills@cern.ch
accelerators are working it’s reasonably calm,
but at the moment, we’re taking 200-280 phone
calls every day.”
If that sounds busy, bear in mind that the
screens are registering new alerts all the time.
During LS1, a number of new systems have
been installed requiring Chris and his
colleagues to familiarise themselves with a new
set of challenges. One system problem could
trigger up to 30 alerts, and some trigger more
regularly than others. “It can be quite stressful
when there’s a big problem such as a power cut
– if we’re operating, everyone calls us – the
physicists want to get on with their physics!”
semiconductor fabrication cleanroom for Philips.
“CERN uses essentially the same technology,
just on a huge scale!” says Chris. “It’s the
hands-on interventions that I enjoy; we’ve been
given more responsibility and more chances to
go on site in LS1 so I hope that will continue.”
Fast-track for high school teachers
Every year, CERN runs a three-week intensive
programme for high school physics teachers.
Participants come from around the world and
demand for places always exceeds supply. 54
teachers joined this year’s course from 32
countries.
In 2013 (during LS1), a staggering 1.8M alerts
were registered (doubling the total from 2012).
Each one had to be dealt with. During normal
operations, there is one person on shift, but for
LS1, the team has needed extra resources and
volunteers were recruited from other parts of
CERN to assist the team. The experience has
given them a valuable insight into the
complexities of CERN and its operations.
“If we go on site to fix a problem, we’re still in
permanent contact with the monitoring systems
via our phones,” says Chris. “Night shifts and
quiet times are good opportunities to get out and
about around the CERN sites familiarise
ourselves with where the critical systems are
located.”
Having such an in-depth knowledge of CERN
means that the team is often seen as the first
point of contact for troubleshooting any incident
whether it involves the accelerator complex or
not, and this can have its lighter moments; “A
few days ago we took a call advising us that the
sheep that graze some of the land inside the
main CERN site had escaped. Sorting out
livestock definitely isn’t our responsibility, but
actually we do have the farmer’s phone number,
and we did solve the problem!”
Aside from farming, Chris and his colleagues
come from a variety of backgrounds –
cryogenics, electrical systems, cargo ships and
submarines. He himself started out as an
apprentice maintaining high vacuum, RF,
cryogenics and metrology equipment in a
A roomful of rapt teachers listen to CERN Director General Rolf
Heuer © CERN
Ed Wright teaches physics at Eltham College in
London. He found out about the course by
chance when he brought his students on a visit
to CERN in October 2013 and he applied
immediately.
The course is intended for teachers who have
already demonstrated a commitment to
continuous professional development, and the
participants are expected to show how they will
share the knowledge that they gain with
students and colleagues in their own schools
and beyond. Ed intends to pass on information
to colleagues in neighbouring schools but for
Emily Galloway, the knowledge will be spread
wider - she teaches at St Christopher’s School,
an international school in Bahrain. Having
taught in several international schools, she will
share her experience with physics teacher
colleagues around the world as well as the
thriving science society in her own school.
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Written and edited by Stephanie Hills, UK Communications and Innovation Officer @ CERN
Stephanie.hills@stfc.ac.uk or Stephanie.hills@cern.ch
The course is a mix of lectures, visits and
hands-on activities. Work doesn’t stop when the
daily programme ends because the teachers are
each part of small groups looking at specific
development topics. At the end of the three
weeks, the groups will share their ideas and
activities with each other.
Ed’s work group is looking at how to build
demos as cheaply as possible that can be used
to explain particle physics in the classroom, “So
far, we’ve worked out how to build a model of a
toroid magnet from cardboard tubes and wire,”
he says.
Emily’s group comprises colleagues who are
based in the Middle East and is focused on
looking for parallels between CERN and the
Sesame project; both have their roots in the
peaceful pursuit of a common scientific goal.
Both teachers are highly enthusiastic about the
High School Teacher Programme, “I’ve been left
passionate about the subject,” says Ed. “It has
awakened my curiosity about particle physics –
I’ve picked up so many fascinating little facts.
I’m better informed, more knowledgeable. I
didn’t think that particle physics could be a
hands-on topic, but it can!”
“It’s a fantastic opportunity to take part,” says
Emily, “I’ve learnt so much and ironed out some
misconceptions – things have changed since I
did my physics degree in the 90s. I’ve got a real
clarification of what the Higgs boson is about!”
That clarification came from Joe Incandela,
former spokesperson for CMS and the man who
announced the discovery of the Higgs boson on
behalf of his collaboration. It is the chance to
attend lectures and question physicists of this
calibre that has been the highlight for Emily. For
Ed, who has a background in engineering, his
highlight has been seeing the scale of ATLAS
and the LHC’s dipole magnets.
Both teachers recognised that spending three
weeks at CERN isn’t possible for every physics
teacher, but their message was clear – if you
can, you should!
More information about the High School
Teacher Programme is available online. If three
weeks is impossible, why not consider the three
day UK Teacher Programme based at CERN?
Feeding the creative process
By James Molony (work-experience student and contributor to
Young Scientists Journal)
Renowned Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda is the
latest artist-in-residence at CERN after being
awarded the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica.
As part of the residency, each artist is paired
with a scientist - their ‘inspiration partner’. In
Ryoji’s case, he’s working with Tom Melia, a
CERN Fellow in the Theory department, but
he’s also met with other researchers at CERN
including Simon George (RHUL).
The Prix Ars Electronica award aims to build a
portfolio of art about CERN as a way of
engaging with new audiences. Ryoji creates
moving-image, sculptural, sound and new media
works and the Prix Ars Electronica
Collide@CERN jury said that they were
impressed by his ambitious research project to
look at data in quantum dimensions.
Tom was a natural science partner for this
project, ‘I play and compose music – I’m very
interested in music, and the physics and maths
behind it. Science is trying to address what it is
to be human and how we interact with the world
around us. We’re pushing the boundaries of
what we know, and that’s exactly what Ryoji
does through art. Before this project I had never
spoken to an international artist, but Ryoji has a
very enquiring mind, he is very curious and
interested.”
Simon also appreciated the opportunity to talk to
the artist, “It's a rare and special treat to be
given a personal guided tour through their work
by the artist themselves. I enjoyed the chance to
ask questions and understand better what he
was trying to do. It was interesting to see that
his work is all about engaging with the public this came through clearly from his films and
what he said about them. He was most excited
about the films that showed people interacting
with his work. His work is about data and draws
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Written and edited by Stephanie Hills, UK Communications and Innovation Officer @ CERN
Stephanie.hills@stfc.ac.uk or Stephanie.hills@cern.ch
heavily on science which he is very proud to get
right even if it seems (to me) that it is not critical
to the experience people take away.”
TEDxCERN is back!
What are the big ideas in science that will help
us address tomorrow’s major global challenges?
Hosted by Brian Cox (Manchester and ATLAS),
TEDxCERN will bring together inspirational
speakers from around the world who have ideas
worth sharing.
Simon talking to Ryoji – the artist declines to be photographed as
he prefers to let his art speak for itself. This is a rare picture of his
hand. © CERN/A Koek
In fact, Ryoji spent his first week at CERN in the
cafeteria poring over textbooks to understand
particle physics. He then talked to Simon about
architecture of the ATLAS Trigger and the
hardware and software technologies involved
(see UKNFC 31). “Ryoji seemed fascinated by
the high frequencies involved: they are much
higher than the audio wave and
digital sampling frequencies he works with, but
we found some analogies between them. We
talked about the limits of human
comprehension; nobody can experience directly
what 40 million times per second means (the
LHC bunch crossing rate and L1 trigger input
rate) so it is hard to explain. In my mind I can
meaningfully picture 10ths of a second, not
much less. He explained that he had been
playing with making changes at the resolution
limit of an digital audio sample (44kHz for CDs)
which some people could notice and others not.
This made me realise that there are completely
different ways to think about things and humans
are capable of much more subtle appreciation of
tiny/fast things than I realised. I will try to use
this when I explain to the public what I do.”
For Tom, the partnership is much longer term –
he will be meeting and exchanging emails with
Ryoji throughout the next two years. It’s too
early to say what the partnership will deliver, but
he is excited by the prospect of helping Ryoji
create a new piece of art.
The theme for 2014 is ‘Forward: Charting the
Future with Science’. The speakers range from
experts in future medicine and wireless
technology innovators in rainforest conservation
to developers of food and energy resources,
educators in mathematics and science, and
young talents breaking new ground.
The event, on 24 September, will be held at
CERN but there is a unique opportunity for labs,
universities and other organisations to take part;
you can build your own event around the live
feed from CERN and engage with your
community about science and STEM subjects.
More information is available on the TEDxCERN
website.
How to subscribe
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from CERN, please contact Jill Little.
Back issues of UK News from CERN are
available from the archive.
Diary dates
Collider in Manchester - until 28 September
CERN Council – 15-19 September
A world a particle in Liverpool - until 8 January
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Written and edited by Stephanie Hills, UK Communications and Innovation Officer @ CERN
Stephanie.hills@stfc.ac.uk or Stephanie.hills@cern.ch