ATLAS LEGO

LEGO is so much more than just a toy – it can be a useful teaching tool for the wider community as an ATLAS scientist demonstrated by recreating the particle detector at CERN out of little plastic bricks. Dr. Sascha Mehlhase built the model of the ATLAS detector – complete with LEGO men scientists – as part of an outreach programme.

“It was something we have been thinking about in the group for some time – some even tried a year ago, but it failed for several reasons. For this year's Kulturnatten, an annual outreach event for us in Copenhagen, I decided to pick up the idea again and there we go,” Sascha told Laboratory News.

“The idea is to use it for outreach purposes, when visitors pass by our halls or on public outreach events – we can attract visitors and at the same time describe the ATLAS detector.”

The model illustrates all of the details of ATLAS – from the muon and magnet system to the inner-most pixel detector.

“It took about 48 hours to design it in software, and roughly 33 hours to build it. And it cost about €2,000,” said Sascha, a postdoc at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.

The model measures about 1m x 0.5m x 0.5m and is approximately a 50th of the size of the actual detector, which acts as a general purpose detector for the Large Hadron Collider.

“Well, things are roughly to scale … not everything fits perfectly, as there are limitations from what LEGO actually offers in pieces … but it matches roughly 1:50!” said Sascha.

Sascha – who searches for stable massive particles at ATLAS – hopes that a replica model could be placed at CERN, maybe in the ATLAS exhibition at some point.