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p1-06 Dissecting the LHC

Your Mission:
    
Write a brief 250-300 word essay on how a component of the LHC works.

The LHC is the greatest engineering project in the history of human kind. Composed of a 27km cryogenically cooled magnetic ring that circles the Swiss / France border 200m below the surface, it is poised to start collecting data in January 2010 with 6 different types of “detectors”. The LHC has the potential to solve many questions about the nature of matter and the universe itself. It truly is an exciting time to be a particle physicist.

What to do:
START at the BBC site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7543089.stm) and select a component of the LHC. You may choose one of the following:

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Atlas

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LHCb

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CMS

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Alice

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Totem / LHCf

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LHC Tunnel

In this “discussion” you must not only give some details about this component, but also how it basically works and how it fits in with the LHC as a whole / what it is looking for (if applicable). To provide a full answer to this you may also have to give a little background on the physics that it is studying (i.e. dark matter, Higgs boson, quark-gluon plasma etc).

It is essential that you include pictures and write your response in YOUR WORDS. Do your best to interpret the difficult physics into a manner that a general science student could understand.

Realize that you can use more than just this site. There are plenty of others out there which could help you in this discussion.


CMS Detector (click to enlarge)

Submit your assignment to www.turnitin.com as instructed in class (on daybook).