Back in October 2006, FacilityBlog wrote about the ASHRAE video, “Licensed To Chill“–a hip “rap” tribute to the field of HVAC&R engineering. More recently (August 2008), we covered the first industrial rap song, created by ITT employees to highlight the importance of workplace safety.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that engineers are just natural born rappers, particularly when you consider this next story. It’s even grander (in terms of engineering) and more popular in a kooky way (no offense to the folks at ASHRAE or ITT).
Now hold onto your seats, because I’m not even sure how to explain it. Thanks to Wikipedia, I’ll start with a definition of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC):
The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of 7 TeV protons. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the current theoretical picture for particle physics (aka the “Standard Model”). The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.
As the highest energy particle accelerator, the LHC is funded and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over 85 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. The idea of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), began in the early 1980s. The first approval of the project by the CERN Council occurred in December 1994 and the first civil engineering construction work began in April 1998.
That ends your 60 second physics lesson and provides a bit of background for this Friday Funny—an extremely popular YouTube funky love tribute to particle physics. Yes indeed, there’s a rap dedicated to the Large Hadron Collider! Along with the good beat, the rap explains the theory behind the project much better than my 60 second physics lesson.
From Universe Today:
Puzzled about particle physics? Want to know what the inside of the Large Hadron Collider looks like? Like music, fun and science? Want to know for sure the LHC won’t create a black hole that will swallow the Earth? Find all of the above in a rap Kate McAlpine, 23, who used to work in the press office of CERN, where on September 10, the LHC will be powered up. The song has been a hit on You Tube, and has been downloaded over 400,000 times. Physicists say the science in the song is “spot on” and provides a rhythmic tour of the mysteries of modern physics and the workings of the LHC, while noting that “the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.” Without further ado [but with subtitles, for those of us too old to understand the language of rap], here it is:
This video has more than a million hits on YouTube, and it was first posted just a few months ago (July 28, 2008). Unbelievable!
