Friday, December 16, 2011
First Close Contact with CMS
Yes! The time finally comes, that I will go to the interaction point (P5) of CMS experiment on December 14, after being a member for four years. The excitement was quickly diminished after knowing there are several requirements in order to get "down" there. In addition to obtain the film badges, helmet etc, there are several safety tests to be taken online and two training courses to take. Will I get the permissions less than two weeks?

In getting the film badge, they have to associate my biological data with the badge. They did this by using the iris recognition as appeared in some sci-fi movies as the Angels and Demons.  The online tests were not hard, but because there were more than five of them and each one takes more than half hour, it was challenging if one want to pass all of them in a short time.

For the training course, the purpose is to learn how to use the oxygen masks in case of emergency under the ground. After the introduction and demonstration, I was one of the three volunteers to exercise with the real brand-new mask in the classroom. It was not hard and I did it with no problem. Afterwards, everybody went to the simulated "bunker", where the darkness, gas and siren indeed made one feel nervous. In this semi-real situation, I did put the mask on finally, but still was slower than inside the classroom and forgot a few details such as to straighten the oxygen tube and to tighten the strip around the neck. Hands on experience can only obtained by hand.

On December 13, one day before going down, I took the final coure of radioactive protection and waited for my access request. Around 10pm in the evening, I was shocked to receive the rejection email for the reason of missing the radioactive course. Immediately I called the person in-charge and realized that the record was not reflected in the database yet.

In the morning of December 14, I explained to the instructor of the radioactive course that I need to access the area and work this afternoon. The lady was very nice to agree to update the record quickly. Around 12pm, one hour before our departure time, I finally got the confirmation!
We drove about 20 mintes to get to the P5. Fortunately, the iris scanner recognized me after I tried twice and let me took the elevator 100 meters under the ground. We worked continuously until we finished the measurement around 5:30pm. It was already dark on the ground. Although I didn't have chance to see the detector due to our tighten schedule, I felt fulfilled as being an "insider" and looking forward more excitement in the coming 2012!
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Sunday, October 16, 2011
Boston Memory
The earliest memory of Boston -- the name -- come from my middle school English text book, which was a story of Titanic. The lady who was going to Bostong gave her seat on the lifeboat to another person. Later on,