My Travels

Big Update

Here's what I've been up to!

Sunday
Not much happened Sunday. It was another relaxing day. I did a lot of IRC work, walked around campus a little (but no new pictures) and got Thai takeout for dinner (sooooo tasty)


Monday
The first day of the experiment! The beam was supposed to come online at 4pm but it was delayed and so I waited for an e-mail from Dr. Chen to tell me when I should come in to "see the action". Unfortunately, the action was going to be well after midnight so I ended up just relaxing all day, again, because he felt sleep would be better for us than waiting for the beam.

I did get to go to the MSU Dairy though. It was so delicious. The ice cream was very very creamy!


Tuesday
I slept in but then I spent the day in Data U-6 (where the computers controlling our experiment are). I figured I'd hang out and find out as much information as I could before my shift on Wednesday.


Wednesday
My first shift! I worked the 8am-4pm shift and it was anything but calm! We had the Germanium detecor fill during our shift. The detecors are filled automatically with liquid nitrogen to keep them at the temperature required to function, but while that is happening you have to do the CRDC Mask Callibration (two runs one with each CRDC in place). That was really interesting!

Then we noticed that the beam current was fairly low, and the operators were asking us if we wanted to retune. Since the event rate was still pretty high we decided to wait.

Then, at the end of one of the runs, our beam cut out. We got a phone call from some random person saying that a student had tried to enter the S3 vault (the vault where our experiment is) and it tripped the interlock system and cut out the beam. Then there was a resounding sound on the PA system "... call the operators at 305". They weren't too pleased with us at all until we explained it wasn't us who tripped the system, it was some random student. So we went and secured the vault and were given back the beam.

The shift was fairly uneventful after that, other than that Benji and I got to go to the "Short meeting" and be the representations for the experiment. That was pretty cool. Then we had to give the beam back to the operators (around 2pm) because a VIP was taking a tour of the facility and they needed to replace a foil on the diamond detector.

The beam wasn't given back on our shift so we spent the rest of it just relaxing and surfing the net on our laptops =)

Labels: Michigan

posted by Jenn @ 7:46 PM