Show at the DVT
For many people, myself included, what goes on at the LHC is at least a little beyond comprehension. At the Notre Dame Digital Visualization Theatre (DVT), students and teachers from the NDQC are trying to make the material a bit more accessible.
They are in the process of putting together a full animated presentation explaining what each of the individual detectors does. To do this, they are using a Hollywood level animation program called LightWave. Last week, students and teachers both went through a three day training program in LightWave to provide some experience with the program. Sample training videos for LightWave are here. They have already been able to construct models (example below) of each of the four detectors of the LHC and are currently refining them.
One other thing that they are doing currently is trying to rewrite scripts for the DVT operating system. They need to be able to work the program in a bit of a different way than it is generally used because they do not want the Sun to be the center of the universe for this presentation. Ideally, the Earth would be the center and they would have the ability to zoom right in on the LHC in Switzerland.
Unfortunately, the presentation probably will not be completed by the end of this summer program at NDQC but the project will be continued after. Hopefully some time soon there will be a completed show ready for the public.
