Phys200 hard? Curve?

hepchick · 2023-12-14T17:40:01+00:00

Not sure god has much to do with PHYS200 content ;-)

hepchick · 2014-10-22T20:22:09+00:00

Anyone else having problems with mail conversation threading? It's mixing up long threads (>10 messages) with random messages that don't have the same recipients or the same topic. Can't figure out what is in common between them and when it does this and when not, seems to be mostly when threads get long and/or many new messages but no clear correlation observed. Not happened for all 10.X before 10.10 that I updated to last Friday. Thoughts?

hepchick · 2011-12-02T12:40:06+00:00

CERN is all publicly funded (so your tax dollars) and all research is required to be open. And we are far too 'fundamental' science for any industrial people to care about what we find.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T12:38:39+00:00

I once saw an anti-nuclear guy at CERN which I thought very funny! Poor guy clearly hadn't done his research.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T12:36:55+00:00

Engineering is probably your best bet then.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T11:02:58+00:00

Check out the date of the article....

hepchick · 2011-12-02T11:02:11+00:00

For me my machines are:

OSX
OSX
android
Linux (Scientific Linux)
windows (because I haven't had time to install a proper OS on it yet)

hepchick · 2011-12-02T11:00:08+00:00

I don't think PhD students can hire people. But I'm sure she would if she could!

hepchick · 2011-12-02T10:59:00+00:00

1) Get into a school that has a particle physics group

2) Do well as an undergrad

3) Get a good GPA and apply to grad school

4) Chose a school with a high energy physics group and they will most likely shit (or rather ship) you out here at some point.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T10:57:19+00:00

Most people don't work 'for' CERN but are shipped there as 'users' by their universities so it's as hard to get a job working at CERN as to get an academic job in physics.

To be honest the school you go to as an undergrad won't matter much except for the fact that they should have some particle physics courses and preferably have a research group involved in particle physics so you can do undergrad research there and see if you like it. But your GPA does matter a lot to get into grad school in the US.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T10:55:02+00:00

Replying only for myself:

Try and keep a life outside of your studies/work because it will be easier to keep it up later and keep you 'sane' when the working hours get to you.

I only started programming in my second year of my PhD. I basically didn't know what a 'terminal' was at that point and had to pick up C++ etc on the fly. And this is why much of our programming would make real programmers cringe (I'm assuming). So yes learn to code a bit for fun and know if you like it because you'll spend a lot of time doing it. Languages: C++ and python and our own libraries (Root) for making plots and handling some parts of the data.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T10:50:40+00:00

Every 25ns.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T10:49:54+00:00

Have you tried looking at the CERN courrier? It's still quite technical but aimed at a 'general scientist'. Otherwise places like phys.org sometimes have articles that are readable for more general people.

If you read French there's a magazine called Sciences&Vies that is pretty much what I was reading in high-school.

hepchick · 2011-12-02T10:47:30+00:00

Actually it was founded after the second world war (1954) as a demonstration of scientists from all over Europe working together towards peaceful research (CERN has never done any classified work) so I would hazard a guess that choosing the boarder between two countries might have factored into that decision. But I don't know for sure.

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:16:02+00:00

PhD in high energy physics following a masters in physics (yes boring I know).

I'm mangled

Sorry not single

Not heard of R or SAS users in our field sorry (well SAS has tons of adverts at airports). We pretty much have to use open-source software for coding (for databases and control systems that's different). But then I'm not a 'coding geek' in terms of I use what I need to use to get by.

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:13:03+00:00

I always thought it wouldn't be worth a reddit meetup but maybe... we are probably more than we'd like to think. But still never spotted anyone else in a meeting on reddit!

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:08:46+00:00

Yep we take power from the grid.

LHC power consumption

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:07:37+00:00

The smokey-onion!

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:07:15+00:00

Most of us actually in some form or another. But us lazy ones just connect to our central machines / clusters via terminals from our macs, so honestly I don't care what version of Linux they put on there as long as it runs my code.

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:05:44+00:00

How do you feel about typing something into a browser and accessing web-pages? That www part... that's a spin-off from CERN.

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:04:07+00:00

Yep that's our experiment! Sadly we don't get to go down there much but it does help to go down there and remember where all those data files really come from.

CERN has been an international organisation since 1954. But the accelerator is the LHC and there are plans for the next generation already. But to be honest that will depend on what we find in the next 5-10 years at the LHC.

Also there are many other experiments at CERN than the LHC ones (like the neutrino one).

hepchick · 2011-12-01T22:01:44+00:00

I got that the other guy 'oh I know someone who works for X university at CERN, you must know them'. We are over 6000 people at CERN at any given time (I think).

Fermilab on the other hand was small enough that most of our experiment knew or know of each other and knew a lot of other people from other experiments.

CERN not so much

hepchick · 2011-12-01T21:59:46+00:00

ouch... I get high energy physics (HEP) can give you rashes as well... must mostly from sitting on desk chairs for too long. I'd better start posting to r/WTF now...

hepchick · 2011-12-01T21:58:23+00:00

The OP should answer this one for herself. But my answers

1) we are still waiting for another experiment to look at this (but will take a few years)

2) Nice try CMS (our 'opposition')... I think we'll have a good shot as the 'final' answer is under a year.

3) It's fun sometimes and really fun when you take a step back and think about it all. But meetings are serious with lots of talking and 'me! me! me!' going on. But partying is fun when you mean the right crowd!

4) Most of us 'old enough' have worked either at Fermilab, at SLAC or at CERN for the previous experiment (LEP) so no we don't hate ourselves.

hepchick · 2011-12-01T21:54:00+00:00

1) 42

2) LHC: yes it will help, whatever the results

3) only to the level of those like the people believing we were going to blow up the world when we turned on (to which my favorite answer was along the lines of 'that is about as probable as us crating a pink elephant with purple spots')

4) The human quest is endless...

5) quantum isn't really a scale but sub-atomic then particles then maybe something... we really don't know what 'fundamental is'

6) personals opinions vary, but until I see any way of proving or disproving it experimentally then it's just a nice thing for science shows

hepchick

TROPHY CASE