Guten tag, all.

I just had an awesome weekend.  I attended San Francisco Science Hack Day  and it was awesome!  It was two full days, so let me lay it out for you:

about me: programming & science n00b
mission: to make & hack things with SCIENCE
vision: to hack data from Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider for better accessibility and understanding, esp for enthusiasts but n00bs like me.

results:

• my knowledge of particle physics went from 0 to … some? probably 1 if it’s on a scale of …100.
• crash course in python and javascript programming
• +5lbs from bountiful free food and alcohol
• Increased tolerance to caffeine
• I made THIS!
• The group collectively put THIS website together!
• 10 GBs of LHC data, out of the gazillion terabytes of data both available & unavailable to the “public” (I say with quotes because not exactly sure where I could even get the publicly released data…)

Note: If you’re interested in the source code, it can be found on GitHub under mattbellis.

So, what those two graphs mean that I put together is [I THINK, IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY] a reflection of two different ways to calculate mass of muons. Muons produce when two protons collide together, along with other particles, including mesons. The second graph (using Einstein’s equations/special relativity), you can see a second “hump”, signaling that there actually is a second meson existing that the first graph didn’t show.

All ‘n all, thanks to my intro course to computer science, I was able to have somewhat of an understanding of what was going on, as well as built upon my skills (especially for my final project coming up!).   All I have to say for those n00bs to any new skill: Dive right in.  That’s the best, most fun way to learn!

♠

Other hacks that were done over the weekend here.