Allison Ford_CERN Summary

Allison Ford_CERN Summary

My name is Allison Ford, I am a first-year graduate student of architecture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, US. I was extremely fortunate to visit the LHC and 3 of its 4 experiments at CERN this year as part of a class visit organized through Michigan professors Sandra Manninger and Matias del Campo. Our visit to CERN was an incredible experience, and the many unique opportunities we were fortunate enough to witness will have a profound and lasting effect on myself and my work as a designer. Our guide throughout our week-long stay at the site, Panos Charitos, was incredibly accommodating to our large group, and a genuinely welcoming, delightful, and knowledgable host. Thanks to Panos and the many incredible scientists, engineers, and other brilliant minds whom we had the privilege to learn from, this experience will not soon be forgotten. Upon arrival, the most notable impression of the CERN campus was the shear physical scale of the 27-km Large Hadron Collider and its 4 main experiments, almost unfathomable before visiting the site, and the magnitude of planning, construction and materials required to realize such an incredible degree of precisely-coordinated engineering is awe-inspiring. Perhaps the greatest shock to me was the fact that, despite our seemingly extensive knowledge of the physical world and our surroundings, it is commonly accepted that only about 4% of the particles that make up our universe are known. 

Photo: the ATLAS detector, open

One of the most memorable experiences was the rare glimpse our group was given into the ATLAS detector, while it was open for maintenance. The intricacy and precision required to operate such an amazing experiment is daunting, and the multitude of colossal layers of disks stitched together with microscopic detailing lend it an immense degree of beauty. It is a rare embodiment of almost surreal beauty derived from a contrast of scalar extremes and generated purely by function.