>>11443759>but I just wrap my head around building a particle accelerator. is a physicist engineer present? or do they just hand the blue prints to the tradies as they usually do and just let them put it together?generally, with a big accelerator, the main challenge is designing the magnets and RF (accelerating) cavities. so physicists and engineers and technicians will work in the lab to get one segment of magnet working and will test a tiny chunk of the thing. this is more "accelerator physics" as opposed to particle physics. but then when they prototype the first working elements to make the thing, then they go and lay out a design for the accelerator and the general requirements in things called a "technical design report" with is far from being a "blueprint". then it largely gets handed off to engineers or physicists who are basically engineers who happen to have PhDs in physics to actually put it together. like for instance figuring out mechanical stuff and logistics and infrastructure for electricity and cryogenics is not something the physicists worry about on the large scale (though they would figure out the small scale on their one-off prototypes). so it largely goes to engineers and technicians to actually build the accelerator in that way.
particle physicists care much more about the design and construction of the particle detectors. engineers and technicians help on that stuff with electronics and firmware and stuff, but they have no idea how to interpret the data they get in and whether it could be used to do any good particle physics. so even with technical sounding stuff like making silicon tracking detectors or readout ASICs or specs for what firmware has to do in FPGAs, the particle physicists do a good share of thinking about that stuff to oversee the engineers and techs, much moreso than with the actual accelerator
