Christmas time, peaceful time

For Christmas Eve a poem ... As I could not find any nice English Christmas poems I chose a German one. And when it comes to (Christmas) romanticism and dreaming who else could be the author than Joseph von Eichendorff ...?

Weihnachten

Markt und Straßen steh'n verlassen,
still erleuchtet jedes Haus.

Sinnend geh' ich durch die Gassen,
alles sieht so festlich aus.

 An den Fenstern haben Frauen
buntes Spielzeug fromm geschmückt.

Tausend Kindlein stehn und schauen,
sind so wunderstill beglückt.

Und ich wand're aus den Mauern
bis hinaus ins freie Feld.

Hehres Glänzen, heil'ges Schauern!
Wie so weit und still die Welt!

Sterne hoch die Kreise schlingen.

Aus des Schnees Einsamkeit
steigt's wie wunderbares Singen -
O du gnadenreiche Zeit!

Aaand, of course for everything: A music recommendation! ;)

Left: For those with time and muse: Bach - Christmas Oratorium (with English subtitles). Right: For those with less time and muse (or those who - like me - like calssical music more than baroque music): Beethoven - Symphony No. 1

Christmas bakery in the house of Hell

No news for a long time ... Exams, lab reports and the like. But now it is Christmas time and Christmas time is always family time so today I wrote a little report about baking in the house of Hell - which is where I live of course. ;) 

Baking with love!

So starting off we (mother + grandmother + sibblings) threw all the ingredients in the appropriate bowls, mixed everything together and started rolling out the dough. That was the time of the first incident when our oldest family member entered the kitchen. After he examined the scenery carefully he explained that we should use a hammer. To get the dough in cookie shape. Without looking the highest kitchen-commander told him he was a blatherskite. After considering this for a while he disappeared. But only to return with a hammer a few minutes later still insisting that we needed it. Despite powerfully eloquent declaiming his cause and with rich gestures showing us how to use his favourite device the highest kitchen-commander still attested him that he was a blatherskite. So after a while he left again. This time only to make room for middle-son who stormed into the kitchen with a cardboard box over his head and making hellish noises which even drowned the ghettoblaster orchestra that old-son was conducting standing in the middle of the room unavailingly gesturing to clarify that the contrabasses should play louder. After this it was lunch time ...

The baking hammer -
a device irreplaceable in every kitchen!
(Thor would be proud.)

This went quite relaxed until everybody (almost) finished lunch. After he finished first the fadder ("father" as pronounced in the house of Hell) of the house stole some food from middle-sons plate and confidentially explained to him that this is something you should not do ... Afterwards - everybody was done now - everybody started - as usual - talking, cheering and mumbling at the same time and - as usual as well - you could only understand middle-son telling how a few years earlier he always burned plastic bottles with a friend and explained his smelly clothes with the neighbours smoking all the time. Then he cheerfully slapped fadder on the shoulder and ended his story with "That's how it was, right? - Why aren't you Sean Connery by the way?". The fadder only slightly nodded and got up to set up coffee. A few minutes later he returned and casually mentioned that he ate all the Christmas cookies we baked earlier (~ 3 kg so far) to make room for the coffee machine.

First cookies ready for the oven.
2731 more to follow!

All in all this was a very normal day in the house of Hell so far. I am looking forward to three more weeks that will go on in approximately the same way - there is no better place than where your family is! :) For today there are still 27 different kinds of Christmas cookies to bake so that is what I will proceed with now.

Photoluminescence of immigrants

Breaking news! (Not to be taken too seriously though ...)

As at the moment most of the stuff that is going on at the university is writing lab reports I wanted to share some of the more important results with you! A few days ago (or is it already weeks?) we were sitting in k-space (probably only physicists come up with the idea to call a room k-space ...) and half-heartegly discussing our plots of the most recent data. Just before we ate lunch so slowly we were falling into "food hibernation". Shutting down all important physicist functions like brain, fine mechanics a.s.o we entered a state that many politicians must live in. Because suddenly it was obvious! The data we acquired one day before from photoluminscence excitation spectroscopy (PLE) showed the development of immigrant violence in Sweden! (The immigrants were we (or "was us"?) in this case ... but no, we did not fight each other over exercise tasks.) As you can see yourself from the figure below the violence rate increased dramatically with the start of the measurements (beginning of our studies), then dropped a little when the night clubs were discovered. The long term development for the next five days however shows an increase again as exams are coming up. Perfectly reasonable, is it not? We at least concluded that this analysis should be enough to campaign in the next election in whatever country might have the next elections ... Will you vote for us? ;)

Analysis of the immigrant violence in Sweden from PLE measurement.
Significant spots and developments are professionally highlighted.
(Figure reproduced from original considerations in k-space.)

Hallands 3/4

Half of the brunch - everything made on our
own. Especially the ham, of course!

Today it is exactly one week ago ... Like one of my former high-school teachers once said: "Sometimes you have to do something hard!" (I am amazed that I still remember this.^^) So one week ago I got up at 7:00 in the morning. On a Sunday! Voluntarily! Ok, maybe this was not "hard" but rather "crazy" ... But I was asked if I could work at Halland's brunch and since I did not do that so far I said yes. It paid off though!

Our (ver nice!) förman chose to make a christmas themed brunch since it was the first of Advent. This included self-made bread, cookies, "usual brunch stuff" ;) and grönkål which was what I was mostly responsible for. Rip three kilograms of grönkål apart, cook it, fry it. Standing in kale-vapour at eight in the morning mentally still half in bed felt a little like cooking meth without gas mask must feel ... But after the morning dizziness disappeared everything went alright and the brunch turned out really great!

As there were not so many people attending the brunch we had a lot of food left again ... Enough for the whole following week! So it was not only fun working there but it also paid off somehow. :) Only now I am torn between fun work and maybe more awesome food leftovers and getting up at a time that usually does not even exist on a physicist's clock ... "Det é kärlek!" ;)

A real vinking's adventure!

Amon Amarth - Death in Fire

Some of you might know that besides calssical music, jazz and rock I am also a big fan of metal music. Yesterday Amon Amarth played in Malmö. So right on my doorstep. I already knew this since one and a half month but was unsure if I should go or not. (By now I do not even know why I ever hseitated.) For those of you who do not know: Amon Amarth is a Swedish metal band and one of the most famous in the world. So the consideration was: Swedish metal band in Sweden 20 km from where I live ... Yesterday I finally came to reason and bought a ticket literally three minutes before the reservation time passed. (The counter was running in the top left corner of the screen.)

Some time afterwards I got a little concerned if I should have bought the ticket insurance as well because the storm outside was not decreasing - very much on the contrary. But "whatever" I thought and rode to the central station, the way to the concert place meticulously planned, with three different arrival routes, two alternative routes and an emergency extraction point, as is self-evident when you go to an unknown territory. ;) Arriving at the train station - surprise, surprise - all trains cancelled. ALL trains cancelled. Someone at the train station claimed to know that one of the contact lines was blown off. That made me wonder if an area where there are heavy winds from time time could maybe prepare for a case like this ... (Actually exactly the same happened last time when it was stormy.) Ok, but that is another story.

So how to get to Malmö now? Well, as there was heavy wind anyway I just decided to fly there. "Been there, done that" as someone already quoted today. ;) So then I made it to Malmö. There the storm was even funnier: It contained heavy snow and hail as well. :) The wind blew the snow-hail so strong that you could not see. And by that I do not mean "not see where you are going" but "not see". Parts of the time it was impossible to keep your eyes open because of the snow-hail. Well somehow the destination "concert" was reached through all inconvenience and I already felt like a real viking. ;)

Cheers to an incredible evennig!

Then the concert started. First "Hell" (funny enough to mention on this blog. ;) ) as support and "Carcass" as second act who both played good music. (Nevertheless, I do not like them for different reasons. But the music was cool. ;) ) Then the main act which justified everything: Amon Amarth!

You can read at many places that Johan Hegg (singer) is very charismatic front man but that does not quite describe it. Although it was only a small crowd of maybe 300(?) people everything fit yesterday and probably everything felt - again - like a real viking. ;) Really, really good sound (for all of the bands), everybody with a top performance and Johan Hegg as the thundergod in person. :D I saw some videos where his voice seemed a little stressed but yesterday - perfect! Even better than on the records! So you see I am still a little flashed. ;) Should you ever have the opportunity to see Amon Amarth live - use it! Should you ever have the opportunity to decide between Amon Amarth and another band - chose Amon Amarth. (Yeah I failed my own advice on the Grasspop Festival a few years ago but then I did not know ...) Great evening!

The super secret science base

Crazy whatever-setup for whatever. ;)
(Actually it is a vacuum chamber
where synchrotron photons can be
injected to examine samples.)

Yesterday we visited the MAX-lab here in Lund. It was called a "lab" which usually involves doing

something on your own. Measuring squares for example. Well, that was another lab I will tell about next time. ;)

First I was a little concerned that this lab in MAX-lab could be a little boring as there were no student lab setups but only "real" science setups. It was not boring. Nobody prepared us for what we should see in the big hall of MAX-lab.

But first: What is MaxLab? Short answer: It is a synchrotron. What is this? It is a big circle (circumference of 90 m for MAX-II) where electrons are driven around to emit bremsstrahlung. The bremsstrahlung are photons (light) which are then used for experiments. So this 90 m circle stood in a big hall, its most critical radiation areas secured by a super high-tech red and white barrier chain which the radiation cannot pass. (No image due to scientific concealment.) But it was not only the synchroton there. There was everything! A paradise for every do-it-yourselfer and experimental physicist! Just a lot of stuff, tools, screws, materials, vacuum chambers, improvised stands for photon pipelines with the pipelines itself, cables, ... everything! :D It felt like area 51, only cooler as we were really there.

Atomic submarine feeling ...

To give an impression of all the crazy stuff I put some pictures from the highly secret science base here. When we passed one of the corridors it looked just like in a nuclear submarine. Five minutes later a mechanical voice from some hidden speakers announced: "MAX-II injection in five minutes!" (not kidding :D) and againfive minutes later: "MAX-II injection now!" More science-fiction is almost not possible!

Control base for everything.
To the right there was a second
setup like this. :)

Actually, science-fiction is not even that far off as they are currently building MAX-lab IV in Lund. It shall be finished in 2016 and will be the most brilliant synchrotron wordlwide at the time! And in MAX-III they developed some modern magnets that all the fancy synchrotron institutions in the world want to use.^^ Just the right time to get here! ;)

The adventures of the little physicists part II - the secret lecture notes

Photofit picture of the observed suspects.
Image drawn by an anonymous genius.

Ok this is a slightly crazy blogpost. Just to warn you in advance. ;) It represents the mood of one of the last lectures and especially shows the dangers of mentally cracking when you study physics - dangerous game! So here we go ...

Yeees sometimes even the most interested physicists have a hard time to follow the lectures. As someone very precisely described some lectures are just too "slidy". This means: Too many slides, too confusing slides, too little information ... This again causes the listeners to slide to sleep if they cannot hold their concentration high by some other means. So some very promising plans might be forged in the mean time ... Some of the more delicate ones are published exclusively by the physics secret service at this very point!

This is an image of the battle plan recorded first. The targets and the obstacles (lab report) are identified and the first relations developed. Note the slight confusion about whom to deal with and about the priorities. (The coffee machine was an especially hot target as it provides free coffee - would have been a bad idea to steal a coffee machine where you have to pay for your own coffee, of course!)

One after the other the targets are sorted out and concrete deals are sealed. Connections between different strings are established and the bar is set higher! (With a little preparation this might even work. Subject of the lecture were different microscopes. With a little fantasy they look just like catapults and lasers and sh*t. Actually they do have lasers in them!

As well as the lasers note the brilliant idea to trade sambuca with the Russians - nobody would ever guess the connection between sambuca and Russia - no way to trace it back!)

Nevertheless you should never leave a lecture without having learned something so at the end the following conclusion was made:

(STM means Scanning Tunneling Micrsocope - closely connected to the laser gun! Thus: Do not mess with it.)

The adventures of the little physicists

Looong time ago there was a physicist writing a blog. Then he got occupied with loads of stuff and experiencing adventures at university. Now before the next exam he takes a break and tells some of the maybe funny adventures. ;)

(c) Homepage CERN

One day four little physicists gathered in the basement of the chemistry building to look at some funny images produced by a million dollar scanning electron microscope. After two hours of carefully observing stuff you usually cannot observe (too small ...) in dim light in a small room with insanely expensive and complicated scientist toys they packed their bags and started the long journey home. Soon they encountered a mysterious crossing where their only thought was "I have no memory of this place!". After some considerations (of course including serious looks to all of the exits) and calculating the crystal orientation of the building they decided to follow the 0 -1 0 direction, meaning "minus x" in a right handed coordinate system and "left" in a language that not-crazy people speak. So the four little physicists entered an ominous corridor that started to seem familiar after some meters. But behold! It was on level too low, the corridor leading back to daylight was one level up! The physicists returned, trying to correct their mistake but - oh dear! - the door was locked. The same door they just had passed! Great confusion. This had to be an asymmetric potential barrier! (Physicists hate asymmetries.) After dealing with the first shock knowing something about tubes and particle currents the physicists quickly decided that if they moved towards the other end of the corridor-tube there should be an exit as well! Only - oh dear again! - this door was locked as well! After laughing their a**es off the four little physicists decided to accept their fate as bound state in a finite quantum well (locked corridor) and waited for someone to lower the energy barrier (door) to free them and transform them back to plane waves in free space ...

A few days later there was a second lab exercise, this time looking at even funnier images of a transmission electron microscope - bigger microscope (actually it filled a whole room), way more expensive microscope, smaller images ... Same building, same basement ... Ok, this time the physicists were prepared, having used a mapping function to remeber the way ... ;)

(Just by the end: Seriously, who builds corridors where you can get but not out?!?)

Skål för alla vikingar som kom hit!

A little cultural exchange on a Monday evening: A tradition at the sittnings here in Sweden (formal to semi-formal dinners organised by the nations) is singing! As I have been to a few Tackfests (thank you sittnings for working) now I want to share my favourite song so far. I do not know if it is my favourite song because it is the one I can sing loudest (since it is the only one where I know the melody :x :D ) or if it is because I really like the melody but anyways, here it is! The melody is the one of "When Johnny comes marching home" so you might sing along while reading the text. ;)

Vikingen

En viking vill ha livets vann, hurra, hurra!
Den hastigt i mitt svalg försvann, hurra, hurra!
Till kalv, till oxe, till fisk, till fläsk,
När kärringar bara dricker läsk,
Då vill alla sanna vikingar ha en bäsk.

När vi har druckit bäsken slut, tragik, tragik,
Då bäres varje viking ut som lik, sig lik,
Och sen om vi vaknar vi sjunger en bit,
Sen korkar vi upp Skånes Akvavit.
SKÅL för alla vikingar som kom hit.


A viking wants to have the water of live, hurray, hurray!
Which quickly disappeared in my throat, hurray, hurray!
To calf, to ox, to fish, to pork.
When witches only drink soda (or any not alcoholic drink)
Then all true vikings want to have a bäsk. (a kind of snaps)

When we drank all of the bäsk, tragical, tragical
Then all vikings are carried out like corpses, like corpses,
And then when we wake up we sing a little
Then we open Skånes Akvavit (SNAPS!! flavoured with anis, I think)
CHEERS to all vikings that came here!

Someone told me that every now and then new songs are composed and presented at an event for this exact and only purpose but I have to admit that I do not remember if this still happens or if this happened in earlier times. It would be a great thing though if it still happened!

For those who do not remember the melody here is a nice version of it: (Music first, singing afterwards.)

The Physics Pub and the Popcorn Quantum

Figure 1: Some fine Whiskey ...

In the Fysicum - the physics building - here in Lund there is a pub on Wednesdays. Cool enough already! Even better: They have a great variety of beer and Whiskey! Even even better: The prices are very low! As I could not make it to the pub last week as I was working we went there again this week. And as always if many physicists come together in one place someone came up with a ... good! idea. From the popcorn we ordered there was some corn left. And there were tealights on the table. What a shame to waste the corn! (Although it tastes quite good as corn as well.) So someone build a device to make tealight popcorn! (See figure 2.) Basic principle of operation: Put corn into spoon - put spoon over flame - wait. But as always when introducing new experimental techniques the first run failed: The spoon crashed into the light and suffocated the flame. Too bad! So a supportive spoon was installed to prevent this. (This is the version visible in figure 2.)

Figure 2: Original quantum popcorn experiment setup.

Next and most important ingredient for any first time experiment: patience! So we waited ... and waited ... and waited ... and nothing happened. After some time of alternatingly staring into the flame and into our glasses one of the experimenters came up with the great idea: Liquid! (Probably he/she stared more into his/her glass than into the flame - "In cervisia idea" - freely after "In vino veritas" ... ;) ) So we took the next best liquid available and poured beer into the spoon. :D And waited ... well, same as above ... The master chef in our group then suggested "oil" after a while. So someone sneaked into the kitchen and organised some butter which we forwarded into the (new) spoon. More waiting. Then suddenly: POOF!! A wild popcorn appeared! It worked! Universal amazement all over the place! After carefully examining the product of the experiment one of the experimenters even sacrificed himself to taste-test the result.

Figure 3: One quantum of popcorn -
created in the Physics Pub in Lund.

As there is only salty butter in Sweden the popcorn tasted exactly like (salty) popcorn is supposed to taste! After a quick calculation of the density of popcorn states we concluded unanimously that we produced one quantum (the lowest possible unit in case of quantised states or expressed differently: the smallest amount of something) of popcorn! A real success! Now mankind is not only capable of producing continuous spectra of popcorn in an industrially optimised way (cooking pot) but also to investigate the properties of low-dimensional popcorn structures. The last two month of studying seem to finally pay off!




(Sorry for the slight misplacement of the images, I did not have the nerve to dig in the auto generated html code to optimise the image placing ...)

The Battle of Lund

1676 - They called it the Battle of Lund when the Swedish king Charles XI with 8.000 men defeated the invading Danish king Christian V with his 12.000 men near Lund in one of the most brutal battles ever fought on Skandinavian ground.

They called it the Battle of Lund until today because today a battle was fought of unprecedented levels so far in the basement of the international desk in Lund. RISK - destroyer of friendships, sower of hatred and cause of absurd brutality: The yellow, seeking to govern the whole Asian continent, the red, seeking to destroy the yellow, the green, seeking to destroy the red, the blue, seeking to destroy the green and finally the glorious black, conquering all North America and Australia after starting from a hopeless outpost in Africa destroying the green and thus favouring a blue victory by targets passing by.

At the beginning everything looked already decided from the start: The red spread out over all South America and Africa - until the green almost blew them off the map in one big campaign spreading fear and loathing changing the tides. Only the black hesitating to finish the red off in their hopeless situation spared the other peoples from world domination by the green ... At the same time yellow scratching at the edge of total Asian domination only being denied one country fiercly defended by the black and the blue fighting back from the south after almost being destroyed causing grim battles full of bravery and heroism. Waiting for the right moment like a spider in its net and slowly acquiring Noth America piece by piece the black's time then came and in two determined moves devastating the Asian east coast Australia could be won as last puzzle stone in the big picture.

So the second Battle of Lund changed the course of world history on that one rainy November day ... Only all friendships are still intact and five students are one step closer to world domination having sharpened their strategic skills ready to step outside the molding warmth of university ...

Physicists on Halloween

What do you do when you plan to go to a Halloween party and you do not have a costume? (Well a costume was optional but it is way funnier to contribute to the overall confusion of appearance. ;) ) The course of events that we followed on the day of the party a few days ago was about this:

• Decide that you need a costume.
• Think hard about it and come up with a lot of crazy ideas all of which are not feasable within two hours of remaining time. ("make a transistor out of three people" (oh those physicists ...), "dress as lecture" (yes, >lecture<), ...)
• Lower your standards. ("Just pin a sheet of paper to your chest and write cloak of invisibility on it.")
• Start singing Thrift Shop in the physics exercise because you run out of ideas but want to keep the good mood.
• Drive around in town confused looking for a cheap last-minute costume. (Did not work, incredibly expensive - everything!)
• Remember some crazy as bonkers black metal bands and their face paint.
• Buy some black and white makeup and find a girl who can apply it. (Thanks, Sarah! :) )
• Hope that it does not start to rain.
• Rock the party! :D

Overall, I think the result was quite awesome given the scarce resources thanks to our makeup specialist. :)

Drinks for the local trihedron

As promised some plans for the local trihedron ... Still I did not come up with a fancy English/Swedish translation. But first for those who do not know this name so far: A local trihedron (actually I am not even sure if this is the correct English term^^) is a coordinate system with its origin in the observed point. Such a coordinate system is of interest if the point moves for example in another coordinate system which is in spherical coordinates. We learned that in Theoretical Physics I so do not worry to understand everything. (Our teacher was a real black mage which makes it even more difficult. His name was Schwarz by the way which means Black if you translate it. Many funny (physicist) jokes developed from that, you can believe me. :D)

Some day then one of my fellow students opened a facebook group named Zum lokalen Dreibein which kind of means At the local trihedron. Blessed be his creativity! At this day I decided that should I ever open a bar this would be its name.

So much to the name. But as there is already a bad-ass physics name for the bar we need some bad-ass physics drinks. The first three will be called simply x, y and z. You might have guessed that this has something to do with coordinates. This idea came from a friend of mine who demanded that there have to be shots named after the coordinate vectors. (He has a really cool blog by the way: Dantes Blog - check it out! The latest post is about infinities, really great!)

Pictures from my second life. ;) Nice evening behind the bar
yesterday. We had only 87,5 kg of cake left from the meals ...
(Sorry for the unintentional covered advertising.)

So now we have a cartesian set of shots. Next: A set of spherical shots, what else? The names will be disclosed later but physicists might already suspect what they will be.^^ Then there should be some cocktails: The first ones shall be named Gaussians. There will be a One Sigma, a Two Sigma and a Three Sigma. The first one has a 32% chance of having an extra dose of alcohol, the second one still a 5% chance of an extra dose and the last one is for those who want to be sure about what they are drinking. The numbers are obvious I guess. ;)

As you see physicists have some weird ideas from time to time but that is how science is done, right? ;) Some more ideas for the craziest pub ever will be laid open some other day. Creative ideas are always welcome!

A real viking storm!

Today Sweden got struck by the nice and friendly weather that devastated the rest of the continent already before. Actually the action is going on right now. Two street signs standing besides each other are already so excited by the spectacle that they keep applauding by banging against each other all the time ...

Damage from the vikingstorm in front of the chemistry center -
chemistry trees are not as strong as physics trees. ;)

It started when I was sitting in the new course that started today. To be honest it was a little boring. It started getting interesting when the first cars and trees flew by the windows outside. When the first house followed I decided that I should not take my bike home but that I should fly as well. It worked quite well as my profile is rather ... streamlined as you might remember. ;) (Only my physical profile, do not confuse the physical streamlining with the "societal" streamlining.) On my way I met some Swedes that had the same idea. Flying in the same direction I asked them if this was usual autumn weather but they explained to me that it was not. So maybe this is a mortal version of Ragnarök that occurs every now and then. ;) A real viking storm! And as the Öresund bridge is closed off to traffic as well we are now locked away from the world ... So should we decide that we have to go to Germany today we will do so as real vikings - by sailing! One of my fellow students already proclaimed to be the captain tonight. A pirate's life yoho!

Lund University pars unio

First exams in Sweden passed, time for a review ...

Of course this is not a Pisa test with boring stuff like grammar and orthography and stuff. ;) (Though this can be very interesting if you really care for it, just saying ...) It is more a short resumee on my studies in Sweden so far. So especially people who think about going abroad to Sweden might find this interesting. (Answer in short: Yes, do it!)

Exam in Processing and Device Technology.

So first some short factual differences to good ol' Germany: The semesters last four month here and at least for us physicists they are usually divided into two halfs. For two months I heard Semiconductor Physics and Processing and Device Technology now, wrote an exam on Tuesday and had an oral examination today. The next two month will be Physics of low dimensional Structures and Analysis on the Nanoscale with exams in December. This is a great separation I think because in this way you can really focus on two subjects and still do four courses in one semester. In Germany it was not particularly fun all the time doing up to four or five courses in parallel over a whole semester. The next semester will start after Christmas, so no break as long as after the German winter semester.

However, the real difference is the contact between students and professors. When you come to Sweden from Germany you do not feel like dealing with professors here ... Everybody uses first names, you can stop by at the professor's offices at any time and you can even call them. On their mobile phone. This is, let's say ... not usual in Germany. (At least calling professors on their mobile phone ...) In Sweden I got the impression (and that is what the professors proclaim as well) that the teaching is more of a mutual nature and that the professors are eager to learn something from their students as well. (Although this is probably patience most of the time. ;) )

This sounds probably great. In many ways it is great. Still there is a negative side to it as well in my opinion. At least it starts at this point. It seems that the first small setback here in Sweden was caused by the supervisors of the lab excercises .Of course I do not want to offend anybody but with only two exceptions the supervisors (phd students all of them) did not leave an impression as confident and as professional as I was used to from phd students before ... This goes in the same direction as the easier contact to the professors: The aura of omniscience that uses to surround the professors I knew so far is not as present here - I suspect this is because of the easier contact. In general the university here is more "comfortable", not as demanding as and one step slower than I was used to. Positive on the one hand, feels like something is missing on the other hand. Summarised, the university experience is less of a fortress of wisdom and a shelter of knowledge impression than you might (or at least I do) expect of a university ... (You totally should study in Lund anyway, this might sound harsher than it is supposed to. ;) )

But at the end of course let's consider the positive aspects: Step I of becoming a Master of Physics (ouw yeah!) - rock the first master exams - mission accomplished!

Free Gospel!

 

Gospel choir Rejoice in Lund's stadshallen.

After studying some crazy as bonkers (I was advised to use this phrase by my flatmates) nanophysics yesterday I just did not really want to stay home in the evening. Lucky enough I was not the only one around here so we (two beautiful girls and me ;) ) decided to go to a free gospel choir concert. One of the guys living in our house sings in this choir, hence the idea. And it was an excellent idea because they were really good! Homogeneous and dynamic choire, groovy and playful piano and strong and expressive soloists - what more do you want? Next Saturday Rejoice sings in Malmö together with IDMC from London. I am not sure if I can go there but everybody around here should consider it - it will be amazing!

Related to this concert I dug up a great version of the great song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen performed by some Scandinavian artists. Make sure to wait for Kurt Nilsen (fourth singer)!

Hallelujah

The best pub in Lund - Hallands of course!

The best pub in Lund - Hallands!

As announced before now I managed to work in Hallands Pub as well. :) That was yesterday and it was fun again! We started by making lasagna for 80 people (11 liters of bechamel sauce, ouw yeah! :D) which included cutting some 20 big onions ... You will probably only see three men cry more when it is all or nothing in football ... Or expressed in another way (as one of the guys always sobbed in between tear drops the seize of marbles falling to the ground): "It was so beautiful!" Eventually there was no tear fluid left so we cut the rest quite fast ...  The crying area covered half of the kitchen later on so those were some really good onions!

 

That is whar 50 eggs and 4 kg of sugar look like.

After serving this bad-ass power lasagna we then started to make kärleksmums ("lovejummy" or sth. like that^^) for 80 people as well. The ladies caring for their body mass index too much should stop reading now because this involved some 50 eggs (the scaled recipe said 60, but we only had 50 left ...), at least 4 kg of sugar, one liter of cocoa powder (when scaling up amounts the Swedish measurement system of dl instead of g failes miserably ...) and several liters of milk. (Consult the images given for visual documentation.) Summarised: Awesome sugar chocolate cake!!1! (After rescaling the recipe several times because of missing ingredients we just followed the old engineering rule: "Just make it work!" and put everything together that we could find. ;)) My once black shoes and the black working shirt were white afterwards but it felt like being head of the christmas bakery! :)

After the cake was served as well (still steaming of course!) we spent an evening between cleaning, dishing, chilling and of course serving beer and Whiskey! (38 or so different beers and Whiskeys each at Hallands, yeah!) The only disappointment was that the first guy ordering Whiskey ordered Jack Daniel's ... "Whiskey" ... leaving the good Islay's in the shelf ... -.- Whatever, it was a great evening! And - very good thing of course - it starts to be like back in Heidelberg that wherever I go, I meet people I know. :)

Chocolate cake for 80 people.

After cleaning and closing at the end we almost made it to escape with a shopping trolley filled with the remaining beer but we were stopped by the stairway to heaven leading up to the street ... Too bad. ;) We were allowed to take the remaining lasagna home instead so now I have enough lasagna to feed all of my living community for three weeks. ;)

Thanks to the guys for an awesome evening!

One lecture about WTF please

Yeah that people like to dress up here in Sweden was some of the first things that I learned. During the so called Nollning (beginning the new semester with partying, drinking and dressing up) you could meet Supermen, princesses (usually with beard, a lot of bizeps and hairy legs :D ), crazy animals and a lot of other different species everywhere in the streets. Very normal.

Today some of those party animals seemed to have rosen from their semester coma as it came to the following today:

Mathematicians' Christmas in October - I love Sweden! :D
(On the screen that is a micromotor btw, etched out of silicon - crazy sh*t!)

Without suspecting anything we sat in our last lecture before the exam and listened to our dear professor. Suddenly the door to the lecture hall opened and a bunch of costumed guys marched into the lecture hall singing, lined up in the front of the hall without any comment (professor just sat down and watched the spectacle), sang another five songs and left the room - singing again, no comment or anything. Everybody applauded and our professor continued the lecture. His only comment: "Yeah, the guys from section F have some celebration. I think, there is to be some mathematical calculation that Christmas should be today or something." Well done, mathematicians, why not celebrate Christmas two times a year?

An act of pure disjointedness - I love Sweden. :D

Contract negotiations

The Wall. (Source: (c) dercartoon.de)

So today I just wanted to play football with my nation and went to date and place stated on the homepage. Only there was nobody there ... So I played with some other guys from another nation instead. At least today the Swedes showed a very different approach to football than we did in the last three years. Due to adverse weather conditions they play indoor football most of the time and that is easy to see in their way of playing: Short playing periods, a lot of small small dribbling, hectic back and forth ... Well as goalkeeper you do not mind and although my style is definitely different I think on my usual defensive field position I managed to fit into the system somehow as well. Good enough to win, at least. :) (Actually it does not make much of a difference if an attacker chooses to dribble or to pass the ball at indoor football if you decide to crush everything that approaches the goal you defend closer than 5 meters anyway - you just do not have to run as much with less passing. Well, not crush of course but you know what I mean ;) )

So afterwards I was asked if I wanted to play in their team ... Now what do I do?

The Name of the Wind, the fire and the Sword from Hell

Since I came to Sweden I have been told several times already that my name sounded very Swedish - not too bad to begin with in my new adopted country. :) This made me collect some facts about this (sur)name which I combined with a dash of nordic saga.

Some research on the internet suggests that the name Hellenbrand derives from the old name Hildebrand through sound shift. Hildebrand again consists of the Old High German/Old Nordic words hiltia which means "fight" or "combat" (Old High German dictionary, p. 213) and brant/brand which means "fire" or "sword" (Old High German dictionary p. 252).

Some other sources suggested that Hellenbrandt was one of the most common denotations for hell or a common synonym for the Lord of Darkness. So Sauron and Voldemort can pack their stuff, the only lord of darkness am I! :D (That's why I always tell people about the cookies we have on the dark side ...)

But now let us get to the promised nordic saga ... The name Hildebrand is a very old one. It already appears in the Hildebrandslied - Hildebrand's Tale from the beginning of the ninth century and here I tell a short version of this tale:

Hildebrand left his wife and his son to move to the court of Dietmar von Bern to teach Dietmar's son Dietrich the art of fighting. He seamed to have done a good job as later on Dietrich is one of the few survivors and a later king in the bloody Nibelungenlied. (Advice from my father when I wanted to read the Nibelungenlied some ten years ago: Ah you do not need to read it. At the end everybode is dead. - This is actually a quite accurate summary.) Anyway, when Hildebrand returned to his home country with an army (not with bad intentions as far as I remember) after striking dead Kriemhild with Siegfried's sword (her husband - murdered by Hagen of Tronje some time before) at the end of the Nibelungenlied he meets his son Hadubrand with his army. Hildebrand reveals his identity which Hadubrand does not believe thinking it is an artifice of war and so he challenges his father for a duell. Hildebrand cannot refuse due to the prevailing code of honour and so he tragically strikes his son dead. Afterwards he engraves his son's face into his shield where he engraved all the other 80 opponents' faces he has defeated in combat.

The Tale of Hildebrand's Death tells that Hildebrand was defeated by his half-brother Asmundar later on after his sword broke and - lying on his own shield, his head next to his son's engraved face - asked Asmundar to bury him covered in Asmundar's coat.

This is the (short version of the) tale of Hildebrand, my old namesake. I hope I did not mess up some of the nordic sagas, it has been a while since I read them ...

System of a Tackfest

Two weeks ago I worked at Hallands nation as you might remeber. There is this great system that students just work for free at pubs and clubs just because they want to and just to give others a good time. (Not just at Hallands but at all te nations.) However, they do not work completely for free as (at least at Hallands) there are the so called tackfester ("thank you parties"). One or two weeks after working you can attend one of those. There you get a free meal, half a liter of wine, some snaps and free entry to the club afterwards. And most important you have great company! (Singing is included as well - of course!)

Yesterday I attended my first tackfest and as you might have interpreted from the paragraph before it was great! Met some new people, met some people from before again after some time, in three words: a great evening! (Maybe I should have called the article simply "great" ...)

And as if it was not already clear before I will work at Hallands more often - next time in the pub, I hope! :)

Hell of a testgame!

Very official press release by Hell of a blog! Sports Ressort:

Yesterday the maybe promising midfield talent Markus Hell has been observed by local football clubs. In the first football match in his new adopted country he played on the positions of a defensive midfielder and right/left/centre back as often observed back in Germany. Although he showed his usual relentless defence work he could not that often show his greatest strength - his widely feared headers. Nevertheless he got some numbers of famous local teams and will be in contact with some of the local professional teams in the course of the next week.

The overall of all players consisted of a great variety of international players and funny enough the clichés brought up often in earlier times were quite applicable to the game. Hard-line and fierce tacticians never slowing down on the one hand and rather playful and ... emotional dribblers on the other hand - I will not reveal who came from which compass direction. ;)

Typiskt svensk - kanelbullens dagen

Yes, kanelbullens dagen. It is today and indeed it is the day of the kanelbulle - the day of the cinnamon roll. It might not make sense in the first place but today Sweden celebrates the cinnamon roll. :D By eating loads of it and so did I - of course. The kanelbulle is very typical for Sweden and there is probably almost no fika without it. Fika is very Swedish as well, by the way. It is difficult to translate or explain because it is so special.^^ One might translate it with something like "drinking coffee together" but actually it is more. More about socialising, taking a break, relaxing in all the stress going on, ... typiskt svenskt - very good and essential part of Swedish culture which I have learned. :)

In celebration of the day here is picture of kanelbullar I made a few weeks ago. ;)

(Only the right sugar is missing.)

Swedish music - today: reggae!

Today I finally managed to check out some music a friend of mine told me about: A Swedish reggae band called Kultiration! While reggae is maybe not the typical sound one would expect from Sweden I am already a little flashed by the first song I listened to! :D
There seem to be some traditional Swedish folk elements in the music, as far as I can hear being neither a reggae expert nor a Swedish folk expert and it sounds really great! (Assumption purely based on comparison. ;) ) And at least the guy behind the drums seems to be hell of a musician! (I cannot help checking this with every kind of music. ;) ) My Swedish is not yet good enough to understand the lyrics but I think it is something about a better world ... (Swedes might correct me if I am wrong.) Listen to it yourself!

So it seems that Sweden does not only produce some of the greatest metal bands such as Opeth (full concert as example), Amon Amarth (f*cking awesome Wacken 2012 concert), In Flames (even more f*cking awesome Wacken 2012), ... (insert any none American metal band here - they might well be from Sweden ;) ) and as well some DJs as I have learned recently (as you might know, I do not know anything at all about this kind of exposure to acoustic waves but even I know for example Aviciis Wake me up) but that there are also great reggae bands from this beautiful country! (Sry for the long sentence ;) )

The Hobbit

The Hobbit ... No, that is not me, I mean The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. ;) Why The Hobbit? Today I saw the brand-new trailer and I think it is ... quite ... absolutely AWESOME!

I was just wondering: Why does a book get three movies and "the other" book, about six times as long, gets three movies as well? Meaning: How about 18 Lord of the Rings movies? :D

Nah whatever, just enjoy the trailer!

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Official Main Trailer by Warner Bros. Pictures

Students are the new McKinsey!

Before leaving to Sweden I had the awesome opportunity to participate in a consulting project for a big plant manufacturer comprising a few hundred days of work. This was an awesome and very valuable experience I would not want to miss! How I got this possiblity? From the world leading student consultancy GalileiConsult e.V.! Well, at least world leading in Germany. Or let's say in Baden-Württemberg ... or around Heidelberg ... but world leading! ;) (Actually we really do work all over Germany ... For more information on student consulting see GalileiConsult e.V. (German, sry), BDSU (German, sry) or JADE (English, yay!))

The reason why I tell you this is my advice especially for the German students: Join your nearest student consultancy - it is worth it! ;) Not only if you want to become a consultant (I definitely do not want to become one!) but also if you want to experience a unique atmosphere (both working and personal)! (Besides, you can earn quite an amount of money if you do it right. ;) )

 

The reason why I brought up this topic at all is a big German newspaper reporting about "us" consultants recently. :) Die Welt wrote a short article about student consultants (sry, German again ...) which gives a nice insight in what we are and what we do.

Concluding with further info material I would like to recommend our very own GalileiConsult e.V. blog where you can find news about our work from time to time and - yes, mea culpa, not very modest - an article about quality management I wrote some time ago and which gives an insight in our quality standards. (What else could you expect from a studied pedant aka physicist ;) ) It was published on this exact blog and - a little fancier with nice colours - in the first edition of a new career magazine (pdf page 34) by the Campushunter magazin. Enjoy! (Or laugh about the swollen pseudo-consultant writing style.^^)

Lund's cathedral and the giant

In the crypt of the cathedral of Lund you can find a pillar with the relief of a giant embracing it. The story of how the giant got there is the following:

Once upon a time a holy man named Lawrence arrived at the coast of Sweden in Skåne to preach the gospel. For that purpose he wanted to build a house of god, a cathedral. Unfortunately, of course, he did possess neither the means nor the strength to do so on his own. But at the time there lived a family of giants in the hills of helgona nearby and one of them went to enquire about St. Lawrence, concerned of what the holy man was up to. When the giant learned what St. Lawrence desired he promised him the following: "Listen carefully, holy man, to my words. I will build the temple you desire so much for you. But when you cannot tell me my name until the time I am finished you will give me either the sun or the moon or else your eyes!" This he said because all giants keep their names hidden from the world or if anyone finds out they must cease to exist.

As holy Lawrence lacked any other possiblities he agreed upon this bargain. So the giant started to build the cathedral and it progressed rapidly and turned out to be even more impressive than St. Lawrence had ever imaged. But soon came the day that the cathedral was almost finished and St. Lawrence wandered around restlessly, pondering how he could find out the giant's name. On the last day when there was only one stone left to be set St. Lawrence came by the hills of Helgona and there he heared a woman giant sing to her child:

"Sleep sleep my baby dear,

Tonight your father Finn will be here.

Then sun and moon you shall have from the skies

Or else the holy man Lawrence's eyes."

At once St. Lawrence hurried back to the cathedral and shouted up the roof where the giant was sitting to put the last stone: "Finn, Finn, take care how you put the stone in as it is the last one!" Furious with rage the giant flung the stone towards St. Lawrence and rushed down to the ground. "Never shall this church be finished!", he roared and grabbed one of the pillars of the crypt to tear down all of the cathedral. But he was too late. With his name revealed to the world he turned into stone, bearing the weight of the cathedral he himself built over his head for ever and ever.

Since that day a giant has embraced one of the pillars in Lund's cathedral and something has always been missing from the cathedral.

Screw this nanosh*t, I will become a barkeeper!

Yesterday I worked at my nation's nightclub bar, mixing drinks, talking to people, wiping the counter ... It was as fun as I thought it would be, yeah! I am sure, Halland's Klubb 3 is the coolest club in town, as well as Halland's pub is probably the coolest pub. ;) (How cool is a pub that looks like an old library?! - I hope to get some fotos soon.)

Halland Klubb 3 - Picture from Halland's facebook page

 So I think I will quit studying physics, quit thinking about quantum entaglement and carbon nano-processors and open my own pub - just like the Sonderbar in good ol' Heidelberg! Legend says the Sonderbar's owner graduated with 1,0 after studying law - which is said to be impossible, I think. Instead of becoming a lawyer and making money as much as Bill Gates he just left everything behind and opened the second-coolest pub in Heidelberg. (The coolest one is of course the Brass Monkey.) My pub will of course be named Zum lokalen Dreibein! (Physics nerd stuff ... You might translate it to The local trihedron.) For the beginning: Maybe see you in Klubb 3 until then!

(Out of context: There is an amazing book where the main character becomes a bartender after his adventures: The Kingkiller Chronicle - one of the beste books I ever read - and I read many. ;) )

Heidelberg best of all German universities!

Some time ago the latest QS world university ranking was published and behold! Heidelberg is the top German university and ranks on the 50th place of all universities! BÄM! I took this as a reason to dig up some other rankings and compose a little hymn of praise to my beloved alma mater. :) (For fast readers: Overall conclusion at the very bottom.)

Where the top ranking itself should be no surprise as it is known that Heidelberg has an excellent reputation, the first place from all German universities is a happy event! :) If you dig a little deeper you will find that in specific subjects Heidelberg will be (of course - this is statistics) ranked even higher. While with physics (world rank 35) or the faculty of natural science (world rank 39) which is of special interest to me of course, it is not the highest ranked German university anymore it very much is e.g. in medicine (world rank 36).

To keep the physicist's principle of operation upright I also looked at some other recent rankings to verify the results and behold again! in the Shanghai rating Heidelberg is listed as second on rank 54 right after the TU Munich on rank 50. In the mood of this article this is of course close to nothing and so in the 1-sigma range, Heidelberg remains on the first place. ;)

The Die Zeit's CHE ranking does not give any places and it is required to register to see it so I did not link it here, but nevertheless I took a close look at the ranking and in all the interesting fields like for example citations per publication, third party financing, teaching variety, research reputation or promotions per professor Heidelberg ranks in the top groups as well!

The Times Higher Education World University Ranking will be published on Wednesday 2 October - we will see what it brings.

So what is the conclusion? Well, although rankings like this do not count too much we can conclude that we have an awesome and world-famous university in Heidelberg. Hell yeah!

From Lund to Halland over Västra Götaland to Lund

No, that is not the route of my last journey. On my last journey I went to the 384th dimension of hyperspace (not kidding) but that is another story to be told at another place. From Lund to Halland over Västra Götaland to Lund is the route of our victory! We means Hallands Nation in this case and our victory was achieved over our evil arch-enemy Västgöta Nation, harr! Well, kidding this time, we are best friends. :) (In fact, I would have joined VG if it had not been for Hallands.)

So on 13 September on beer crate horses (they were empty though - no alcohol excesses involved) we rode to face our vicious opponent and accomplished our crushing victory, spinning swords (or rather ourselves with our heads on hockeysticks - they kind of like this strange game here, I did not yet figure our, why) and shouting our ferocious battle songs! (This part is actually true.)

What is actually behind this story is a competition that Hallands and VGs traditionally hold with their novisch (the name speaks for itself) to get to know people, Swedish games and to have a good time - mission totally accomplished! Awesome people (yes, Hallands and VG), awesome atmosphere and an awesome party afterwards. The details of the party are classified though because of a Finnish-Netherlands-German covert operative undertaken at this very same evening as well.

As consolation here is an image of the dignified Halland ambassadors holding the hard-earned trophy:

 

(The blurry image results from the energy vibrating in the air and deflecting the light!)

Well, well, well, a blog ...

Well, well, well, a blog ... Now it is real and this is the first post. Why did I start a blog now? After some consideration the question was rather "Why not?" than "Why?". As I tend to muse more than is good for a single person anyway ;) I just did it and here it is. Feel free and even feel welcomed to comment, contact me and feedback - everything is welcome. :)

Furthermore, I received some enquiries now and then about what is going on in Sweden where I currently live so this will cover some of it. As I was thinking of blogging just for fun anyway depending on how the blog develops I will post some stuff about music and science (yeah!) now and then that I think all of you could be interested in - trying to explain understandable for everybody as is my credo when it comes to science. (Possible to be looked up in the collected works of Markus Hellenbrand at the University of Heidelberg.) ;)

Ah I should not forget some cool pictures so here you go:

(Just kidding ...)

Let's plunge right into action with the latest news from Lund!