All posts by Sascha Mehlhase

Nobel signatures

Last Friday, as a kind of culmination of the ATLAS LEGO Challenge, we got Prof. François Englert to par with Prof. Peter Higgs to sign a piece of the large ATLAS LEGO model. Both signed pieces will be displayed in the ATLAS Visitors Center once the new casing is fully set up. Pass by to have a look for yourself. You can book visits with the CERN Visitors Service and/or the ATLAS secretariat.

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© CERN

Overwhelmed by bricks

2014-02-17 17-36-19 LEGO Challenge

About 250.000 pieces, of 201 different types, weighing about 350 kilograms, filled (in fact still are) up a meeting at CERN this week. The latest order of 23 large ATLAS LEGO models came in one big delivery and needed some serious sorting, packing and whatnot. For more than 20 volunteers the task was to 1) find unsorted bags/pieces, 2) divide them into 23 piles, 3) deal with the missing pieces (or those we have too many), 4) fill them into new bags and 23 boxes and 5) proceed to the next type.

We spent several early mornings and late evenings, many of us even a couple of hours during the days and should be ready to ship the models to their institutes by next week. By then there will be 59 large models out in the open. See the stats page for more details.

It’s been quite a social and event as well and we would like to thank everybody who took part in this adventure!!!
I hope the institutes will enjoy building their models and appreciate the work that went into the latest order.

We expect to see some nice coverage about the use of the models at their final locations and certainly have some nice ideas for 2014 on our side … stay tuned!

2014-02-17 17-39-47 LEGO Challenge

ATLAS LEGO Challenge 2014!

Dear ATLAS LEGO Fans,

The (possible, but hopefully not) final shipment of ATLAS Model lego bricks has arrived at CERN and it is now time for: ATLAS LEGO Challenge 2014!

This challenge, taking place the week of 17-21 February, will be a kind of micro-ATLAS project.
A newly formed collaboration will be charged with taking 350 kg of bricks, currently sorted by type, and re-organising them into bags and boxes for 23 large models.

This event, clearly the greatest brick adventure CERN has ever seen, will be launched on 17 Feb, at 5pm in 602-R-021 (you will be required to have CERN access).

Follow progress on Twitter, Google+, Facebook (#BYOPD) and of course here!

The call for volunteers is now open.
Please register at our event page, where you can also follow updates and get information about the event.

The (sad) end of a long journey – ATLAS and LEGO Cuusoo

You might have guessed from the title of the post, LEGO Cuusoo has decided not to consider our ATLAS LEGO mini model as an official LEGO set.

After the initial success of gaining 10.000 supporters in only two weeks and patiently waiting for several months we finally got the sad news yesterday.

This means you will have to dig out your old pile of LEGOs or buy some pieces second hand to build your own version at home. The manual and the 3D design file you can find on our page.