Nerds/geeks rule

Amazing! Nerds/geeks rule. 836,000 hits as of 9/3/08.

"Quarks in the Hood: Particle physics rap is a Youtube hit"

September 3rd, 2008

AFP

Particle physicists fall into the stereotype of geek scientists -- serious, distracted and prone to wearing ties that look like socks -- but a rap hit on the video website Youtube has shed unexpected light on their fun side.

"Large Hadron Rap"...has notched up more than 836,000 hits in the countdown to next week's startup of the world's greatest atom-smasher.

Grooving to a down-with-the-kids beat, and using the multi-billion-dollar collider as a backdrop, rapping scientists in lab coats and hard hats make it easier for people who don't know the difference between a proton and a crouton.

Here's an example of the lyrics:

"Antimatter is sort of like matter's evil twin

Because except for charge and handedness of spin

They're the same for a particle and its anti-self --

But you can't store an antiparticle on any shelf

Cuz when it meets its normal twin, they both annihilate,

Matter turns to energy and then it dissipates."

The rap is the brainchild of Kate McAlpine, a graduate student of Michigan State University who is on assignment to CERN, as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is called.

Next Wednesday, CERN will switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a massive underground laboratory that will smash protons together and analyse the sub-atomic debris that results.

The project, housed in a 27-kilometre (16.9-mile) circular tunnel near Geneva, aims at resolving some of the greatest mysteries in physics.

One of the biggest quests will be to find a theorised particle called the Higgs Boson, which could explain nagging anomalies about mass.

The Higgs has been dubbed the "God particle," because it is believed to be everywhere but is so elusive.

McAlpine told AFP that the rap had been received enthusiastically by her colleagues for explaining physics in an accurate, simple and fun way -- although the reactions also included a due touch of caution.

"I haven't had a complaint about the science, except that I imply that the Higgs Boson is going to be found too quickly," she said.


Kate McAlpine raps about the LHC

Kate McAlpine raps about the LHC

Kate McAlpine

If the naysayers are correct and we are doomed to anhiliation, we might as well enjoy the monemt with the somewhat silly rap tune about the LHC by Kate McAlpine.

"MSU grad's particle physics rap is YouTube hit"

by

Matthew Miller

September 1st, 2008

Lansing State Journal

In the world of particle physics rap, Kate McAlpine is something like a rising star.

Her last video: 537,333 views on YouTube and counting.

The subject: the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, the world's largest particle accelerator.

The text: rhyming elucidations of dark matter, anti-matter; the Big Bang and Higgs Boson, all capped off with declarations that, when the collider is turned on Sept. 10, "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head."

"Rap and physics are culturally miles apart," said McAlpine, a 23-year-old Michigan State University graduate and a science writer at CERN, in an e-mail last week, "and I find it amusing to try and throw them together."

Other people apparently find it amusing, too. Even physicists.

"We love the rap, and the science is spot on," said CERN spokesman James Gillies.

"I have to confess that I was skeptical when Katie said she wanted to do this, but when I saw her previous science rapping and the lyrics, I was convinced," he added. "I think you'll find pretty close to unanimity among physicists that it's great."

McAlpine wrote the lyrics on her 40-minute commutes by public transit from Geneva, convinced a friend to lay down beats and finagled permission to film herself and friends dancing in the underground caverns and tunnels where the experiments will take place.

"We were given extra supervision in some locations," McAlpine said. Some lab officials were "most suspicious of 'rappers' in the cavern."

McAlpine actually honed her physics rapping skills at MSU's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, where she was part of a student research program in the summer of 2006.

The rap she wrote about her Cyclotron Lab experience is based on Eminem's "Lose Yourself" - "mostly for that 'back to the lab again' line," McAlpine said - but she hasn't taken the time to record it. That's the next project.

Michael Thoennessen, associate director of education for the Cyclotron Lab and McAlpine's supervisor when she worked there, lays no claim to helping her develop her technique, though McAlpine says she did rap at least a portion of one research presentation.

But as for the cyclotron rap: "I thought it was just as hilarious as the one she did at CERN," Thoennessen said.

Physicists Rule Out the Production of Dangerous Black Holes at the LHC