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Step 3Study Physics
Sit on your ass for several years and work your way through all those books,
do all those excercises, pass all those exams, do all that lab work. understand
general, basic physics at first. Don't forget to party hard with your fellow students,
if student culture in your country allows it. If you're older because you only found
this instructable after you already picked a profession,
you may want to skip that to speed things up a little.
as soon as it comes to specialising pick the particle physics courses.
there are three general methods of operation in particle physics:
- theory. you want a good basis, but if you're becoming a theorist you won't be using the LHC
directly. so for the purpose of this instructable, you don't want to do that.
- detectors. the detectors are pretty much finished at this time, so all you want is a basic
working knowledge, and be prepared to help running a detector.
for the purpose of this instructable, you don't want to engage in detector development.
- experimental. this is the way to go. visit as many courses as you can. once you do, you're
almost there.
at the same time, if it is not foreseen in the curriculum of your university anyway,
try to get good language and computing skills. A good mastery of English is mandatory.
French is also handy because the technicians, admisitrative assistants at CERN and the
general population around CERN speak it. It is not absolutely mandatory, but helps a lot,
for example if you need a chair in your office (once you managed to get one, see later steps).
and you can't have too many computing skills because particle physics is anarchy to a certain
extend and you will have to work with all sorts of programming languages because everybody
just uses what they like in the end. C++ is most important. OS is almost exclusively Linux these days.
(sorry, no images for this step ... couldn't find any safe for work)
do all those excercises, pass all those exams, do all that lab work. understand
general, basic physics at first. Don't forget to party hard with your fellow students,
if student culture in your country allows it. If you're older because you only found
this instructable after you already picked a profession,
you may want to skip that to speed things up a little.
as soon as it comes to specialising pick the particle physics courses.
there are three general methods of operation in particle physics:
- theory. you want a good basis, but if you're becoming a theorist you won't be using the LHC
directly. so for the purpose of this instructable, you don't want to do that.
- detectors. the detectors are pretty much finished at this time, so all you want is a basic
working knowledge, and be prepared to help running a detector.
for the purpose of this instructable, you don't want to engage in detector development.
- experimental. this is the way to go. visit as many courses as you can. once you do, you're
almost there.
at the same time, if it is not foreseen in the curriculum of your university anyway,
try to get good language and computing skills. A good mastery of English is mandatory.
French is also handy because the technicians, admisitrative assistants at CERN and the
general population around CERN speak it. It is not absolutely mandatory, but helps a lot,
for example if you need a chair in your office (once you managed to get one, see later steps).
and you can't have too many computing skills because particle physics is anarchy to a certain
extend and you will have to work with all sorts of programming languages because everybody
just uses what they like in the end. C++ is most important. OS is almost exclusively Linux these days.
(sorry, no images for this step ... couldn't find any safe for work)
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