Happy Higgs Day!

And Happy 4th of July! Around here, the first anniversary of the Higgs announcement is much more relevant. Today I was sitting in the same room that the announcement was made exactly one year ago! What a cool feeling...I am spending the summer where one of the greatest discoveries in physics was made.

Yesterday the summer lecture series started. The lectures are designed for all of the summer students to attend. I really enjoy them--top scientists are chosen to give talks about topics in their field. The lectures yesterday were a sort of overview before the topics become more specific in theoretical and experimental physics, and some other subjects. Topics that I'm looking forward to include the Standard Model, accelerators (especially the Large Hadron Collider), detectors, nuclear physics, cosmology, astrophysics, medical physics, and specific topics in quantum theory like antimatter. The list goes on and on as the lectures are planned for every morning, all summer. I'm excited to learn a lot, even though parts of the lectures are going to go straight over my head. Most (all, it seems) of the students here have had more physics training than I have, and are older than I am.

My own project is going well. I have finished designing the template for the NA62 checklist, and now we have to open up the server so we can test it. This period for the experiment is called the "dry run," sort of a time for all of the components of the experiment to be unified and tested before they turn the accelerator beam on and start taking real measurements. There are many meetings that the collaborators have during the dry run to inform the others of their progress, as this time is crucial for a successful experiment. Tina and I have been able to sit in on those meetings this week, and we will next week as well.

I have also begun another task for my professor, which is to help him organize one of his classes for the fall semester. The title of the class is "Experimental Explorations in Physics" and Dr. Rubin wants to set up the class so that the students can perform most of the experiments with their smartphones. Dr. Rubin doesn't have a smartphone, so he asked me to help him create and test the experiments that he will teach during the class. I'm excited about this particular project because even though it isn't CERN related, it's education related, which is also something I'm very interested in doing one day.

I have been looking forward to tonight since I arrived: I'm meeting Rebekah, Adam, and Grace in Geneva!! I haven't seen  them since February, and I'm really excited!! I'll be spending the weekend with them, so more adventure stories are to come!