Back in July, the ATLAS experiment at CERN announced an internship contest for multimedia artists with an interest in physics. Applications were in the form of short multimedia pieces about the ATLAS experiment, and the grand prize was an ATLAS internship at CERN during the time of the LHC re-start. ATLAS has now announced the winners of the contest, and has posted the winning entries online for your LHC-video-viewing pleasure.
The top six videos out of 13 submitted were chosen by the vote of 50 ATLAS scientists and students. The contest panel made the final selection based on submitted videos and other application materials.
"I had seen the things people produced about the LHC on YouTube, and knew there was an opportunity there," said contest organizer Claudia Marcelloni. "The quality of the thirteen entries was quite impressive, and we were surprised at the number of animations submitted. All the applicants told us that they really enjoyed creating their pieces."
The grand prize winner was Phil Owen, an Australian-American currently finishing a bachelor's degree in IT. His entry, titled <i>The Origin of Mass: Search for the Higgs</i>, uses original 3D graphics to educate the viewer about the Standard Model, the Higgs field and the Higgs boson, and the ATLAS experiment. Owen will travel to CERN in November to take up the internship after finishing his degree from Monash University in Australia.
"I think it’ll be a great experience," said Owen. "I really want to create something interesting and dynamic that shows the good work going on at CERN and helps the public understand."
The rest of the top entries follow the animated theme. Jonathan Baldwin's second-place entry follows two young CERN researchers on their lunch break in the LHC tunnel as they have a close encounter with the strange world of particles. In third place was an entry by 3D artist Simon Howells that recreates the construction of the ATLAS experiment and imagines an LHC collision. The other runners up include a talking proton traveling through the LHC tunnel, an overview of the ATLAS experiment, and a particle ballet.
