WELCOME TO An Entertainment Site for Scottish Country Dancers - Enjoy the curated selection of theme-related dances for celebrations and holidays, or find a dance associated with a special calendar day, or EVEN your own birthday!
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva
Large Hadron Collider Day
Sep 10
Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day
Today's Musings, History & Folklore
"🎶 The LHC accelerates
The protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers
Will rock you in the head"
~ Large Hadron Rap, Alpinekat
Attention, dancing scientists and physicists and anyone with an excess of "charm" (you elementary dancing particle, you)! Get ready to "rap and reel" with a dance describing what goes on with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)! The LHC is a massive 27-kilometer-long circular tunnel, located 100 meters underground near Geneva, Switzerland. It’s made mostly of superconducting magnets and works as a particle accelerator. In this tunnel, two beams of tiny particles called hadrons—like protons or lead ions—are launched in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. When these beams collide, they create incredibly energetic particles, including the famous Higgs boson or top quark! By studying these collisions, scientists learn more about the nature of matter and the origins of the Universe. Replicate this experiment with this 32 bar reel in a square set described by the devisor thusly:
"The figures (very) vaguely reflect the operation of the LHC starting with injection of 'probe' beams (1st couple solo), full circulating “physics” beams round the two rings (interlocking reels), acceleration (right or left hands across and chase) and stable collisions (Schiehallion reel) - though of course the dancers should not actually collide!"
Good advice! Keep that dance tempo under the speed of light dancers! 🤪 🕺 💃 ⚛️
The Large Hadron Collider
September 10th marks the day the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle collider, went live in 2008.
From the dance notes:
The four couples can be taken to represent the four experiments round the LHC ring. The figures (very) vaguely reflect the operation of the LHC with injection of "probe" beams (1st couple solo), full circulating "physics" beams round the two rings (interlocking reels), acceleration (right or left hands across and chase) and stable collisions (Schiehallion reel) - though of course the dancers should not actually collide! The quick turns at the end of bars 12 and 20 are quite contrary to the way the proton beams behave but allow the dancers to change direction from time to time. The Schiehallion reel is only 3/4 to suggest that quite often the LHC fills are interrupted earlier than expected due to overenthusiastic safety systems cutting in.
Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories, the Large Hadron Collider lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva, Switzerland.
The LHC's aim is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics and in particular, to prove or disprove the existence of the large family of new theoretical particles.
The machine accelerates two beams of protons around a 27km loop at close to the speed of light. The beams go in different directions and are crossed at four points where the protons slam into one another inside giant detectors. The intense energy of the collisions is converted into all manner of particles. New particles are unstable, and the moment they are made they disintegrate into other more common particles. This creates unexpected patterns in the LHC data which reveal the particle’s presence.
For the instructive and amusing Large Hadron Rap, by science journalist Katherine McAlpine, click the picture below of collision events!
Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!
