Caption CERN Contest – All Good Things…

August 3, 2015 by Adam Fabio 6 Comments

Week 25 of the Caption CERN Contest is complete. Thanks to all the entrants who tried to figure out exactly what is going on with this scientist and his strange box. We’re still just as confused (and amused) as you are. He definitely is focused on the box and whatever is in there.

So, without further adieu, here are the winners of this week’s contest:

The Funnies:

“On the slim chance my invention does not go down in history. I hope no one makes a Schrodinger’s cat joke about it.” – [masterdurr]
“Step one, you cut a hole in the box” – [FuzzyNegguts]
“here is a rare shot of CERNs artificial heart prototype. Due to its size, it was only installed in whales. And badgers. I don’t know how, but somehow badgers.” – [jakewisher125]

This week’s winner is [Jack Laidlaw] with “At Cern you have to be careful when having fun with the new guy, John was sent for a bucket of steam and only reappeared 6 months later with this contraption.” Jack is a web designer based in Scotland. He’s an avid fan of electronics, and is going to be getting a hands on course with his new Teensy 3.1 from The Hackaday Store!

A bit of a break

After 25 great weeks of the Caption CERN Contest, it’s time to take a bit of a break. The Hackaday Prize competition is really heating up, along with plenty of other work here at Hackaday HQ. I’ve said it each week, but I have to give one more big thank you to all the folks who have entered and made this a great contest. It’s been a pleasure to read the captions every week and to award the prizes to all the top captions. The science and fun don’t end here though – There are plenty of images in CERN’s archives waiting to be discovered. Take some time and browse through. You won’t regret it!

Finally, I’d just like to say don’t forget to document your own work, and take notes on what each image contains. Be it on Hackaday.io, on Github, or even on your own drive. Otherwise you might see your own hacks in the next incarnation of the Caption CERN Contest!

Caption CERN Contest – What’s In The Box?

July 23, 2015 by Adam Fabio 15 Comments

Week 24 of the Caption CERN Contest was one for the books. There were so many good captions that we had a hard time picking a winner! Thank you to everyone who wrote up a caption and entered the contest. We still don’t know quite what this device was. Our best guess is a coil from a beam line. Some creative positioning and camera focus sure turned it into a conversation piece though!

The Funnies:

“I am the Face of Boe. Has anyone seen the Doctor?.” – [jonsmirl]
“CERN’s brief attempt into the consumer “Pro” audio market. They lost out to the competitions because they didn’t use unidirectional oxygen free copper wires that are blessed by the Tibetan monks. They might be the expert with super conductor magnets, but one hard lesson they have learnt is that you can’t spell consumer without the “con” part.” – [K.C. Lee]
“Go ahead pick up the operating tool!! For your first task remove the patient’s tooth for 10 points. But beware!!! there’s the 10,000K volt charge if you touch the sides!! Enjoy!!!” – [EngineerAfterLunchTime]

This week’s winner is [surubarescu] with “Prototype of the sextuple face electric razor was a complete technical success, but it never went into full production due to some raised (then lost) eyebrows.” Enjoy your new Teensy 3.1 from The Hackaday Store, [surubarescu]!

Week 25

We’re not kidding when we say CERN scientists and engineers really get into their work. Check out this CERN scientist looking down at his… uh, experiment. We’re not sure exactly what this device is. There is a sealed chamber, but is it a vacuum, or some sort of specialized atmosphere for the research this scientist is working on? Either way, he seems very interested in whatever is happening inside this box!

So what’s happening here? High energy physics, or some new coffee maker? You tell us!

This week’s prize is once again a Teensy 3.1 from The Hackaday Store. Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the contest itself.

As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Caption CERN Contest – Smile!

July 18, 2015 by Adam Fabio 11 Comments

Week 23 of the Caption CERN Contest has been laid to rest. Thanks to all the entrants who stopped by to pay their respects and leave captions for the dearly departed SC-1. CERN engineers and scientists are a crafty bunch, so we’re betting that SC-1’s spirit (and many if its components) lived on in newer CERN projects. We have to thank CERN’s unnamed photographer for capturing these events. It’s always great to see the people and the personalities behind the science.

The Funnies:

“After many years of ignoring the pitiful meows, it was finally determined that Schrödinger’s cat was, in fact, dead.” – [Josh Kopel]
“We gather here to mourn the deaths of all those brave and noble components that left this world surrounded by magic smoke to reside forever in great the parts bin in the sky.” – [Kid Iccurus]
“CERN’s annual Halloween parade was a huge disappointment that year, which was probably due to the fact that they held it in June.” – [DainBramage]

This week’s winner is [Scott Galvin] with “Services were held today for SC-1. SC1’s life ended earlier
this week after a devastating head on collision” Scott describes himself as “Just a visiting Geek with dreams of universal domination”. We’d suggest you start small, [Scott]. Maybe dominating a Bluetooth personal area network with your new LightBlue Bean from The Hackaday Store is just what you need to set your plans in motion!

Week 24

The scientists at CERN always take a personal stake in their work. Pushing mankind’s knowledge of science and high energy physics takes a special breed of person. Thankfully this special breed always seems to have a fun side as well. Here we see a CERN scientist posing behind a … a device. It looks to be some kind of coil or beam line part, though the actual use is thus far a mystery even to CERN’s own staff. We do know this photo was taken in June of 1973, the same month as one of the longest solar eclipses on record – over 7 minutes of totality! Was this part of some CERN solar experiment? Could it have been a section of a particle accelerator? Was this scientist just working on his latest art project – perhaps part of a dodecagon exploration? You be the judge!

This week’s prize is a Teensy 3.1 from The Hackaday Store. Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the contest itself. As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

CAPTION CERN CONTEST – Saying Goodbye To An Old Friend

July 9, 2015 by Adam Fabio 4 Comments

The tangled web woven by Week 22 of the Caption CERN Contest has come to a close. It’s been another bumper week with 112 comments. Thank you to everyone who submitted a caption! We realize it may have been hard for some of the network engineers out there to type through their tears, but thank you for persevering! While we don’t know exactly what these two CERN scientists were wiring up, [rwells97] did figure out that the scope in the image is most likely a Tektronix 545/A, which was a popular scope back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The weight on a beast like that was around 70 lbs!

The Funnies:

“Dude, this one’s full of wires too! Every single one of these is full of wires! Why would anyone need so many wires? What in the name of God were they DOING down here?” – [The Green Gentleman]
“Getting to blinky” required a whole lot more work then the engineers realized…” – [Kieran Paulger]
“I think I lost an electron back here, Bob. I’m positive.” – [Christine Hampton]

This week’s winner is [alan] with “Daft Punk was actually two of CERN’s best acoustics researchers prior to forming the band. Here they are after hours working on the track that would later be named ‘Da Funk'”. [Alan] is a Computer Science PhD candidate with focus on computational biology, specifically population genomics. Hopefully he has some hardware in the mix somewhere, because we’re sending him a Stickvise from The Hackaday Store!

Week 23

Something a bit different this week. CERN is probably best known for the various particle accelerators they’ve had over the years. One of the first units was synchrocyclotron SC-1, which operated from 1957 to 1974. According to the album page on CERN’s servers, SC-1’s last day of operation was celebrated with a funeral procession. Scientists, and staff walked the grounds with flowers, top hats, and even a shrouded coffin. We can all related to decommissioning a well-worn piece of equipment. Be it a computer, a machine tool, or even a synchrocyclotron, there are always the mixed feelings of thanks that it did a good job, and relief that it will no longer need to be maintained.

Even though we have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in this image, we’re going to caption it anyway! Give us your best captions of what you think is really going on here! This week’s prize is a LightBlue Bean from The Hackaday Store. Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the this post. As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Caption CERN Contest – Cut The Black Wire

July 4, 2015 by Adam Fabio 13 Comments

Week 21 of the Caption CERN Contest is now history. It’s been a great week of captions, so as always a huge thank you goes out to everyone who entered. We still have no idea what these two CERN scientists were working on. Lenses, switches, and a giant glass screen which could have anything behind it. It’s a tough one. But what we lack in facts, you all made up for in humor.

The Funnies:

“I spy with my quantum eye, something with a 75% probability of being spin up!”- [bbarrett90]
“Preping the Voight-Kampff set up, they have learnt from their unfortunately predecessors that a mirrored bullet proof glass between them and the upset replicant subject might be a good idea.” -[K.C. Lee]
“Mary and Steve swore that they were going to be the ones to win this year’s where’s Waldo competition, unfortunately they lost to the guys in the next lab with an SEM.” – [TrollinTeemo]

This week’s winner is [Lou] with “CERNs early attempts at a retina scanner were a bit cumbersome and time consuming. You had to get to work 20 minutes early just to get past the security check.” Lou’s bio is “Test engineer with Mechanical background who likes to tear things apart”. We bet he’s going to enjoy using his new Teensy 3.1 from The Hackaday Store to build something new with all the parts he has left over from teardowns!

Week 22

Holy cable gore, Batman! This image may make a network engineer or IT person weep, but it was business as usual back in the early days of CERN. 14 racks of equipment, with coaxial cables running everywhere. Let’s hope all those patches are connected to the correct ports! What were these two CERN scientists working on? It’s up to you to tell us as CERN has lost the records!

While you’re working on your captions, check out the old oscilloscope the standing scientist is using. Scope carts used to be necessary. Today all but the most powerful oscilloscopes weigh in at under 10 pounds.

This week’s prize is a Stickvise from The Hackaday Store. Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the contest itself. As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Good Luck!

Caption CERN Contest – I’ve Got My Eye On You

June 25, 2015 by Adam Fabio 22 Comments

As week 20 of the Caption CERN Contest comes to a close, we can say that this scientist may have been a bit sleepy from all his hard work, but all our caption writers certainly were not! Thank’s to everyone who stayed up late and entered.

Whiteboards and their associated dry erase markers have become a staple in every office, school, and home. It’s getting hard to remember that everyone used blackboards not so long ago. High energy physics,and flammable dust probably are not a good mix. Let’s hope our sleeping scientist cleaned the erasers outdoors after he woke up.

The Funnies:

“A weekend at CERNies”- [Rob]
“After bitten by the Schrödinger’s cat, Doc Brown acquired the most useful power of a cat – being able to sleep anywhere, any time.” – [K.C. Lee]
“CERN’s infamous “wind tunnel” experiments” – [Rollyn01]

This week’s winner is [MechaTweak] with “During the great blackboard shortage of ’66, scientists went to great lengths to protect their unfinished work from premature erasure”. [MechaTweak] describes himself as a “Mild mannered design engineer by day, father of four crazy kids by night.” With all those kids running around, he’s going to enjoy having a Stickvise from The Hackaday Store. You can bet he’ll be using the Stickvise to solder up some boards for Shower water saver, his entry in the 2015 Hackaday Prize.

Week 21

These two CERN scientists are looking through some kind of optical apparatus. There is a plano-convex lens mounted on an adjustable arm. The scientists appear to be looking through a window while adjusting some controls.

Is this some kind of physics experiment? Could it be research into psychomotor acuity? Maybe the dark-haired scientist is just getting her yearly CERN eye exam? You tell us!

This week’s prize is the ever poular Teensy 3.1 from The Hackaday Store. Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the contest itself.

As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on theoriginal image discussion page.

Good Luck!

Caption CERN Contest – Work Until You Drop

June 19, 2015 by Adam Fabio 12 Comments

Week 19 of the Caption CERN Contest is now in the record books, though we’re sure we’ll be getting “safety update” emails from HR about the incident for the next several weeks. Thanks to everyone who threw caution to the wind and submitted a caption! This definitely is some sort of medical or emergency room at CERN. We’re still not quite clear as to why they need a full-sized skeleton though. We have to wonder how many lab pranks that poor former-human has been part of.

The Funnies:

“The second test subject survived a bit better than the first, and if you’re wondering, the first test subject is standing in the corner”- [jakewisher125]
“It soon became apparent that it had been a mistake to entrust site security to sharks with lasers.” -[Robb Smith]
“What do you mean blink once if it hurts? Are you serious?” – [Rollyn01]

This week’s winner is [Will Frankian] with “Dr. Banks never tried eyeballing the electron beam alignment again”. Congrats [Will]! Enjoy your LightBlue Bean from The Hackaday Store!

Week 20

Anyone who’s worked on a major project, be it professional, personal, or for a contest like The Hackaday Prize, knows about marathon sessions. Those times when you put in your all and just push the project ahead until you drop. This scientist has definitely given his all and then some! He’s catching a few winks right under the blackboard where he presumably has been working. This image has no caption, though it’s attached to an album entitled Linac control room. None of the pictures seem to show much of a control room though. It seems that back in 1966, CERN’s photographer was a bit more interested in the sleeping scientists than the science itself!

What do you think is happening in this image? Can you make anything interesting out from the diagrams on the blackboard? Give it a shot! This week’s prize is a Stickvice from The Hackaday Store.

Add your humorous caption as a comment to this project log. Make sure you’re commenting on the contest log, not on the contest itself. As always, if you actually have information about the image or the people in it, let CERN know on the original image discussion page.

Good Luck!