3 forms and 0 guns

Weapons and the controlling, personal data taking state - here were are. Not only big cars, also these two prejudices seem to have a germ of truth.
Yesterday I went rock climbing with two Mexican neighbours. In the big parking area in front of the entrance of the sports center we were the only ones by bike. When we entered through the glass door, I was glad to hear that I would be safe inside. But crazy that such a sign is necessary!! Once inside, we were asked to fill in a form with our personal data in order to be allowed to use those sports facilities. Just one time wasn't enough, at the rock climbing section we had to do this again (and again we passed a glass door with a remarkable notice). And a third form needed to be signed when somebody explained us the rules of climbing.
Ufff, but finally we could start and it was a lot of fun :-) In fact, it was my first time of climbing at all and at the end, my arms just couldn't any more...

Nature @ Fermilab

Fermilab warning

"Duuuuuuuuuuuuut! This is a Fermilab security warning. Due to heavy thunderstorms we do not recommend to leave the building now."
or so...
Okay, one reason more[1] to stay longer at work and continue my tasks...

[1] 3 Germans (including me) and two others watched the Germany-Ghana match this afternoon (here at 1:30pm, in central Europe 8:30pm) in the theory conference room with a beamer :-)

Science and Music in Town

On Saturday I went into town again, this time with PhD students from Brasil, Venezuela and Peru.

We went 4 miles by car to the nearest train station (West Chicago) and then over 1h by regional train. First of all we asked some questions in the visitors center where we got very usefuls tips about public transportation, free guided tours and dicounts for museums which usually cost $13. We visited the museum of science & industry, very interesting and so large that we couldn't see everything. For example, videos from inside a tornado and airplanes were shown. But the explanation of what is inside an atom went only to protons and neutrons, mentioning for the future that scientists believe that there might be smaller quarks... There was a lot to try yourself. We did a "relax match". Brain currents of two competitors were measured and it was the aim to relax most and have least brain acitivities. I imagined swimming in Finnish lakes between quiet forests and won the match :-) Good to know that this makes me relax well!
In the evening we listened to a good concert in a park. In summer there are free concerts in Millenium Park every weekend, this time symphony orchestra with choir who were playing singing under a pavillon. Lots of people were sitting in the grass with picknick. It was a great atmosphere!



On the way back we felt quite tired after walking a lot through the sun. It was really hot, ~30°C. There is so much to do and to see in Chicago, I'm sure I'll go there every weekend. Three more weekends are left.

Summer students

During the last week I got to know more summer students. On Thursday we were invited to a "summer student pizza party" outside at the users center in beautiful sunshine. That was really nice. Some people there asked me, if I was going to the graduate student party, too. So far I hadn't heard about the party or this graduate student association. But spontaneously I went 8 miles (=13km) by bike to the Irish pub in Naperville and met more people. It was getting dark, and as I said, the roads are not most comfortable for bikers. Luckily, I met two English PhD students who also live in the village and who also came by bike. So we could safely go back together and talk about the "European biking culture" ;-)

Tourist @ Fermilab

So far I have taken part in two summer student tours on the Fermilab site: the Grid Computing Center and the LINAC (linear accelerator). Here you can see the beginning of the LINAC and the control room.


Have a closer look at the weather forecasting in the upper left corner indicating thunderstorms that were coming closer. Indeed, in the afternoon a warning was given through all loudspeakers not to leave the building now. Some minutes later, a heavy rain and storm started. At least at this moment I did not intend to go home since there was a very interesting talk about new results from Higgs searches at CDF.
One day I went upstairs on the 15th floor and enjoyed a good view over the Fermilab site. To the south west we can see the end of the LINAC before the particles enter the booster. The Tevatron ring has a radius of 6.5 km.


To the north east side we see the Feynman Computing Center, the CDF experiment and a beautiful rainbow over the prairie! To put all this together, here you have an overview - but it is a model, not a real photo. I also marked the village and where I live.

Finally, let me proudly present a picture I took from the plane to California: I spotted the Fermilab main building and the Tevatron ring from above!

Living in the United States

Living here feels really good! It is nice to experience that this country is open to so many cultures and people are very friendly. Nobody says just "hi", but usually something like "hi, how is it going?" also to strangers (never ever in Finland). Of course, this is more a phrase belonging to the greeting, but if you answer "good", the other person might even reply "I'm glad to hear that" which sounds then less to belong to the pure greeting phrase, but I heard that more in California than here in Illinois. Still, people seem quite open and willing to help.
Yet, I encountered two negative aspects in this coutry as well: It is hard to survive
1.) as a vegetarian
2.) without a car.
And I happen to be in both categories. The four main courses served at the canteen are nearly always with meat. Sometimes there is a vegetarian soup or a vegetarian piece iof pizza. But otherwise only salad. After soup and salad for two weeks, now I start to cook myself. There is a little supermarket close to the entrance near Fermilab village. But in order to find a better one, I went a lot around by bike. Unfortunately, many roads do not have bicycle lanes and car driver are not used to bikers, so it is pretty dangerous. Even worse, the chain of the bike I borrowed from the housing office broke when I was furthest away in Batavia. I walked back for 3 hours. There is no public bus connection to the laboratory. At least the train to Chicago stops only 3-4 miles away from the lab so that it is possible to go there by bike.
I still have to get used to all the other measures like length (mile), volume (gallone), weight (lb, oz), money (dollar, half dollar, quarter, dime, nickel, penny) - only time is measured in the same units...
The language works better than I had feared. They seem to have a quite clear accent at Chicago. But I have some difficulties to understand people from other regions. My two supervisors are both from UK. And I should learn more English myself! Besides, the woman sitting next to me in the plane back from San Francisco asked me where I was from. I answered Germany and she replied that she had already heard that from my accent...

Free time activities

While I was not able to do a lot in my free time in the first week, now I am happy to get to know people and find free time activities here. On Wednesday I joined the Fermilab choir. Singing a mixed program with other Fermilab persons for one hour in the middle of the day was really nice. Afterwards we had lunch together in the canteen. One other alto told me that she plays the cello in a string quartet, but they need a viola for this summer. So I am going to play some chamber music with them in the nxt weeks :-) The conductor of our choir is a supervisor himself for a summer student. He put my name on the summer students' mailing list so that I will also hear about their activities. On Friday I could participate in a guided tour through the grid computing centre.
On Thursday we went to an Indian restaurant with 5 people from the theory group and the speaker who had come to give a talk that day. There I got to know persons who also wanted to go to downtown Chicago this weekend. John had told me that there was a Blues festival now. Indeed we went on Saturday and listened to great Blues bands at the Chicago Blues Festival in a big park directly in the center and close to Lake Michigan. Chicago is the Blues capital of the world and the atmosphere at the festival was good despite the rain.



Chicago's skyline shows more skyscrapers than in San Francisco. Lake Michigan is so huge that you cannot see the opposite riverside, a bit like Pacific... We went to a bar on top a high bilding: on the 96th floor!

Work @ Fermilab

FNAL is the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, belonging to the department of energy. The Tevatron, a proton-antiproton accelerator, has a circumference of 4miles=6.4km, thus smaller than the LHC. Different experiments are located on the Fermilab site www.fnal.gov/pub/visiting/map/site.html.For my project I learn something about QCD, how to use my supervisors' program and also how to include formulas and images on a webpage because they want me to document it online. Keith is now away for some weeks, but my second supervisor John helps me a lot, too, and he gives me new tasks.
There are several talks per week in all fields of particle phyiscs, either from Fermilab people or given by invited speakers from somewhere else. That makes the institute life here very interesting.
Comment 06/14: Today there were two special talks about brand new results from neutrino experiments. The auditorium was completely full and people discussed a lot.

California!

"Welcome to San Francisco!"
I was really excited when I heard this after 4 hours of flight from the middle to the west coast of this huge continent. I visited San Francisco and Berkeley from Fri 4th to Mon 7th. San Francisco is an amazing city, located at the gate from the bay to the open Pacific. I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge by bike, went to a town at the bay and back by ferry.


High skyscrapers in the financial district and many white houses under the blue Californian sky are a good combination.



There are people from all over the world, especially also from Asia which is "just" on the other side of the ocean. This can also be noticed in China town. Impressing to see cargo ships from China or Korea which have crossed the Pacific and arrive at SF after passing the gate.

Luckily, I didn't meet any of the mountain lions, but I did see Californian sea lions which like to stay at the harbour, quite social and lazy...

I checked the water temperature only with my feet, but it felt much colder than the Finnish lakes in May. The days are shorter in California than in the Finnish summer, on the other hand the sun shines more vertically, so that I casted only a small shadow e.g. here in front of the "campanile" on the Berkeley campus.

The flight back started with a clear view on the whole bay area, the bridge and the wide ocean, much better than from any tower. The high, snowy Rocky Mountains were visible later.

Some progress

Finally I got my computer account. But until I'm allowed to use the grid, I need one more permission from again another person... Nevertheless, the work is fun and my superwiser is really great. At lunch he told about his first time he came to the U.S. - by boat from Europe! Compared to that, moving by ferry to Finland was only a short trip...
Finally I'm also able to do something in my freetime now without falling asleep immediately. I explored a bit of the huge Fermilab area by jogging around. The landscape is really beautiful, even with lakes. I also reached a bird observation area. Everything within the campus!
In the kitchen I met more and more nice people from all over the world and we had dinner together tonight. Later I found out that there is even a "recreation center" in the Fermilab village with a swimming pool, table tennis, a bar and a music room where I could practice the viola. Of course my viola is travelling with me ;-)

Big Jetlag

Oh no, I'm terribly disappointed about my jetlag. There was a Festa Italiana organized by the Italians at Fermilab here in the Fermilab village at 9:30pm. But I fell asleep at 8pm and woke up at 1am. I went outside, but the party was over :-( I would have liked to meet people, speak Italian and enjoy some Italian food and drinks, but I missed it! The rhythm of the day quite ok in the morning, but after work I can hardly do anything in my freetime. Today at least I was sitting in the grass reading a book (in Italian - so I was already in the right mood for this party!!) and lots of mosquitoes were biting me.
However, my second day at work was good although I still haven't got my computer account yet. It requires a lot of patience... Today there was free food and wine in the main building. At least I didn't miss this dinner. In the canteen plastic dishes and cutlery are used which are thrown away afterwards. Strange because the safety test was also about how Fermilab protects the environment...

First day

The big task of today was to get a visitor ID. It felt a bit like the "Passierschein B68" (?) in Asterix... But my supervisor, the secretary of the theory department and several people in several offices were very kind to help me. However, first of all I had to watch about 1h of safety instructions online in order to pass a test about safety at work - even in the theory department ;-)

My supervisor and his collaborator explained me my task for this summer. I am supposed to use their Monte Carlo program to calculate expectations of different observables for the LHC @7TeV. Today I also listened to a lecture for the summer students here about basic ideas of particle physics and a short introduction to Fermilab. There are only a few summer students, but so far I haven't really got to know them.

First day on a different continent and I forgot my adapter in my room... So I had to go back in order to use my computer at work. This morning I got a bike from the housing office and biking through the nature on this campus is really nice. There are even bisons - but behind a fence! It is very warm and muggy here. I have to get used to the weather. No wonder that the climate different here on 41° northern latitude (same as Rome) after coming from 60° in Helsinki. Therefore it's already dark at 9pm.



Yesterday and this morning it was quite ok, but now I'm terribly jet-lagged and need to sleep...

Arrival

After 2h in the ICE from Hannover to Frankfurt and 9h from Frankfurt to Chicago I arrived quite well. The flight was impressing, we saw Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Lake Michigan... But arriving in the USA is different from travelling within the EU, especially the enormous queues for passport and visa controls after landing. Luckily I didn't need a visa, only a permission. An immigration officer asked me some questions about the purpose and length of my stay.
My supervisor Keith picked me up from the airport, very nice! It's quite a bit from the airport to Fermilab. He even helped me to get my key and to find my room and he brought me to the nearest supermarket. The housing here is a little village on the campus of the research center. In the kitchen I met some Indian PhD students who told me that summer students are here at the moment as well.
First impressions: People are friendly, it's very warm and humid here and there is no whole grain bread in th supermarket. Now I am very tired due to 7h time shift!

Tomorrow my work will start and I'm looking forward to my time here! :-)

Summer plans

After my exchange year in Finland (elinafuchs.blogspot.com) I am going to report here about my summer activities. Due to the different academic rhythms in Finland and Germany my summer break lasts 5 months this year :-) Firstly I am at Fermilab near Chicago, then at the CERN summer student program in Geneva and finally I am going to travel through Italy - without physics.