fragmentin@cern

We are a Swiss based interaction design studio. We create innovative interactive projects; mixing augmented reality, installation, video and game design. We are Simon De Diesbach, Laura Perrenoud and Marc Dubois. We are now spending 3 months at Cern with...

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Media Lab

We went to see Joao Pequenao at the media lab and asked him if he coukd help us find the perfect detector for our project. 

We had a small discussion about how to connect scintillator to limit the needed amount of sensor. This is a trick that is very clever and used in many detectors to help reduce cost and space by using less sensors than scintillators.

It is all about wiring scintillators two by two to sensors, in a special order. The combinaison and interpretation of signals allows you to do the reverse calcul and understand which scintilator received a particle.

The he showed us the new project he’s been working on at the lab.

A new game for the Microcosm where the player will be able to control the LHC beams. Joao has already developed a lot of projects for Microcosm at the Media Lab.

Here is a live visualisation of the computation Grid, with realtime exchange and storage of Data from the CERN data center to the world.

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Researches on particle detectors

We decided to find out if CERN keeps old stock of particle detectors, no longer in used or never put in use in an experiment. We would reuse those and hack them to create another project with it. We’ve been wandering around, asking different people for advices. 

This might be a few possibilities, and here is what we have found so far. 

Here is a few scintillators. Basically scintillators are made out of a fabric that re-emit the absorbed energy from particle in the form of light. Connected to a photomultiplier (PMT) then to a sensor this is a good particle detector. This is a very beautiful material that looks like glass but more heavy. 

Scintillators are very common at CERN and used in many of the particle detectors, such as ATLAS.

But those scintillators could be used for another purpose aswell if we could figure a way to make them work as we want. Using this for a project could be interesting but quite expensive too if we don’t find all the sensors needed and need to buy new ones.

Oliver showed us other particle detectors that we could find but not from CERN. Such as this muon chamber particle detector, coming from an old Russian stock. There is a wire inside that chamber that emits current when a particle hits it. This could also we used as it is quite cheap and not that hard to find.

We also got in touch with other people that can show us some other kind of detector. We will continue the chase.

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Synchrocyclotron

We went to visit the Syncrocyclotron, the very first CERN particle accelerator. It was built in 1957 and used for more than 33 years. 

Now it is remaining for visitors but no longer used for physics. It has been replaced by more powerful Proton Synchrotron.

What was impressive is the size of the magnets compared to nowadays and the design of the machine that is pretty different from what we have seen so far.

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Homemade particle detector

After a few meetings with Oliver Keller, we decided to investigate a bit to find some homemade reproductible and accessible particle detectors.

Here is a non-exhaustive list.

Arduino Muon detector

Muon detector

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Music from Data

We have seen several project of music inspired by Datas, those are a few inspired by datas from CERN. Creations processes are not always the same.

LHCsound

Sonification made from real and simulated data from ATLAS detector. 

LHC collimation project

Sounds from the LHC tunnel, recorded near a primary collimator, then resampled and normalized.

CERN data sonification by Carla Scaletti, who also worked on LHCsound.

Essai on Sonification of the world by Carla Scaletti

Quantizer

Sonified real-time data from ATLAS experiment

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Following our visit to the CERN archives where we discovered so many great pictures of Bubble Chambers in the 70s. Julian organized a meeting with physicist Horst Wenninger who started working on Bubble Chambers Experiments at CERN back in the 60s, such as BEBC. 

He brought us a lot of documents and pictures to help us understand how those experiments where led, talked to us about experiment BEBC. It was a time where computers were as big as a room and magnets where way much bigger than what we saw at the large magnet facility, but what they could capture with cameras and what was happening inside the bubble chamber was more simpler to understand. A picture of real particles tracks, not abstract data made visual by a computer.

It was fascinating to hear so much stories about CERN, and the birth of the world wide web.

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Discussion with Veronica Bindi

We met Veronica again, our inspiration partner, for a nice catchup session after one year.

She explained how she’s been working a lot on new projects, such as finding new habitats for Mars. She is collaborating with different scientists, such as space architects to design those strange buildings. This is a great challenge for the future of science and life on Mars.

We also discussed about science and art and how this meetings we had led to a change on our practice as artists and her practice as a scientist.

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Radon Decay Chain + Cloud chamber V formation

When Radon decay to Polonium, shortly after Polonium decay to Lead. Two alpha particles are emitted at (nearly) the same time. In cloud chamber they are creating this V form.

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Oliver Keller showed us the project he’s working on at the moment. It is an ipad app using a scintillator associated with an augmented reality system to let us see the particles. His idea was to create a mobile cloud chamber. We tested it with different materials.

Then we discussed about radioactivity in general and he showed us another detector called Safecast that was developed after Fukushima to allow anyone to gather data about radioactivity.

Then we talked about decay chain and operation of the microcosm cloud chamber. We were wondering about the material used to produce the different type of particle. To produce Alpha Particle, material is radium, decaying into Radon which is a gaz and can travel through the cloud chamber, then decaying into pollunium, then quickly decaying into lead, producing this double particle trace. Alpha Particles are emitted when the material decay into another material. Other Alpha particles are produced by the decay of Americium. Electrons are produced by the decay of Strontium 90.

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Large magnet facility visit with Susana Izquierdo Bermudez where we learned how Superconducting magnets are made.

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Today’s visit to Antimatter Factory with François Butin where we discovered the latest antiproton decelerator ELENA and some other experiences linked to antimatter. 

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Some suggested lecture for the next month

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Microcosm cloud chamber alpha particle (helium nuclei) 

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Microcosm cloud chamber electron (top) and alpha particle helium nuclei (bottom)

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Meeting with Jeremy Niedziela

Jeremy explained to us how to make calculation of new particles by comparing different method of calculation an spot irregularity and improve the formulas to follow the fonction curve.

He showed us also how the particles interaction curves looks like and the differences between strong and weak interaction. It is the optimum in the strong interaction curve that make the particle inside nucleus stay close but not cross each others.

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Meeting with Hans Drevermann

He showed us his researches, explained the Vplot and how to use graphics and colors to make data more understandable for human. 

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Pixel Detector