MeghanInSwitzerland

As promised, here are my photos from castle chillon, located in Montreux, Switzerland. Most of the captions were taken from the Chillon Castle brochure they gave us when we entered.... read more

Hi everyone! I have put in this entry a brief description of what I have been working on this summer. More will follow once I have a good draft of a final paper that I can post a link to. I am working on ATLAS, which is a general purpose particle physics detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Since ATLAS is a general purpose detector, scientists will use ATLAS to look for a variety of different things including the higgs boson, which is what physicists believe to be the origin of mass, as well as extra dimensions and dark matter. Within the ATLAS detector there is a tile calorimeter that measures the energy of particles. It works in the following manner: First, light is collected from the scintillating plastic tiles of the calorimeter ... read more

I have had an incredibly busy two weeks. Last weekend, I took a weekend trip to Munich with my friends Brandi and Chen. It was raining the whole time we were there, but we still got to experience a lot. After leaving our bags at the hotel, we took a metro directly to the city center. All around us was the Christopher Street festival. I guess it happens once every year in Munich and is a really big festival within the gay community. Thousands of people were packed into the city center to experience it. So, we did what any tourists would do and found the most outrageously dressed person to take a picture with. Then, we started exploring the city. We saw tons of cool architecture, including many churches, museums, etc. that I have since ... read more

I just got back from Interlaken. It was an amazing trip. We took the train up after work Friday, and made it to Interlaken around 10. Interlaken is an absolutely breathtaking town. It is completely surrounded by the Alps. We checked into our hostel, which was probably the best hostel ever. It was really clean, had free all you can eat breakfast, free bus passes, and free passes to the local pool. This morning, I woke up and went paragliding. I was incredibly nervous as we made our way up the mountain. Getting ready to run off the mountain was the scariest part. Once we were running, I knew there was no changing my mind. After about a minute of screaming and being terrified, I got adjusted to paragliding. It was remarkably peaceful. I am usually ... read more

Yesterday I got to go into the ATLAS experiment! It was quite the experience. The security there is incredibly high. They actually have a system that only lets you in if you are verified via a retina scan. It took me three tries to figure out just how to stand, etc. so that my retina scan would work properly. Renato, my advisor, says it took him three tries on his first time too. I can't tell if he made that up to make me feel better or if that was actually the case. I tired to figure out how to get to the room I was in on the virtual tour online (http://atlasexperiment.org/), but it walks right past my door. If you want to get close, head to the tavern, take the elevator to level one, ... read more

For the past two days, we have been obsessing over travel plans. Tonight, we booked our very first weekend trip! Both of the Jeremys, Brice, Chen, Sam, and I are going to Barcelona the weekend of the 25th. Our flight and hotel combined cost about 300 francs/person. I think it is quite a steal and I am very excited to be going somewhere where my six years of spanish will come in use. Our hotel is a ten minute walk from the beach! Tomorrow, the boys are going to the train station over our lunch hour to book tickets to Paris. We want to go the weekend of July 4th. Once I have plans finalized, I will post them. Also, if my security clearances are good, I will be going to the ATLAS pit tomorrow afternoon. ... read more

Yesterday I spent most of my time on a beach by the lake. My friend Jake and I rode a boat, which was free with our bus passes, as far as we could down the lake to find the beach. It was absolutely beautiful! The water was a little cold, but I adjusted to swimming quickly. One of the best things about this lake is swans are always swimming there. So I got to swim with swans! I was also very happy to find gelato near where the boats docked. yum! In the evening, Brice, Jake, and I went to old town for the music festival. It was really crowded, and there were all different kinds of stages set up. We heard punk, salsa, and electro all within a few hundred yards from each other. Somehow ... read more