'Lego physicist' wants his ATLAS detector in the shops

It won’t be smashing protons and neutrons at speeds approaching the speed of light, but it will still be a hell of a lot of fun, and could be in your hands soon — Sascha Mehlhase, a post-doc at the Niels Bohr Instutute, who recreated the ATLAS detector in lego bricks, is now original article and see the pictures.

A nightmare of bags

In December 2011, Sascha, built a 1:50 scale model of the ATLAS detector using LEGO bricks. It took him over 80 hours, to make the design in a 3D modelling program, and put all the pieces together. Since then, the model has toured extensively, after University Post broke the story, and it was linked to by various international technology and physics blogs.

The model pitched to LEGO, is significantly smaller, and can be put together in less than one hour. It will come with a leaflet, explaining the science underneath the original ATLAS experiment, along with instructions on how to put the model together.

“Initially, I was attempting to make the large, 1:50 scale model, available to the public. I was using LEGO’s Design By Me service, which allowed me to send them my design, and buy the real model in a custom lego box. Unfortunately, they shut down the service in January 2012. I can still order custom parts, but they come unsorted, in plastic bags. Sorting them is somewhat of a nightmare”, Sascha says.

You can support Sascha’s Lego bid by casting your vote here.

For the sake of the children

Sascha plans to use the model in education and outreach projects to promote particle physics in the public. It serves as an eye catcher, a tool to discuss the basic design of particle detectors such as ATLAS, as well as a souvenir, Sascha writes on cuusoo.com.

He has various events planned, where students from high-school can come in, learn about paticle physics, and use the ATLAS model to get an idea about the design and principle components of particle accelerators.

You can see a youtube time-lapse video of the creation of the large LEGO model, alongside the creation of ATLAS, below:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqedbzMEeII&feature=player_embedded width:525 height:380 align:center]

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