Large Hadron Rap

Narrative on the Large Hadron Rap interest

The first interview on the project actually happened before the video was even halfway done. Someone in the CERN Press Office had tipped off the BBC about the project, and Tom Alban requested an advance interview for a radio documentary, part of their "Big Bang Day" preparations.

When the video initially went online, problems with compression made the sound fade in and out. This was particularly irritating because Will Barras had made such a good backing track, and it sounded almost too annoying for listening on YouTube. We spent the afternoon trying to work out the problem (Will more than me, for reasons of expertise...), but Adam Yurkewicz found it and put it up on the US LHC blog before we'd worked out what to do.

That evening, I had an email through the CERN Press Office requesting an interview for the New York Times. We gave up on the compression issues -- in its first day, the LHC Rap had more than twice as may views as the year-old Neurochip Rap.

The NYT article sparked the first wave of media coverage as it went up in science blogs by individuals and by publications. It made it into many of the major "geek news" sites like Slashdot, Engadget, Digg, and BoingBoing. This drove the views up to half a million. It struck me as slightly ironic that I would be written about in the blogs of publications I'd be happy to write for, such as National Geographic, New Scientist, Scientific American, and Discover (this post is a personal fave).

Individuals contacted me for materials: lyrics, music, the video file, or just the vocals for remixing. I created a "links and lyrics" page and added to it as others asked for a video without subtitles and a track without vocals for translations. Will has been great about keeping everything in the public domain.

In mid-August, YouTube fixed the sound. There was much rejoicing.

Freshly arrived in Geneva at the beginning of September, I was making dinner when I noticed that I was getting a YouTube comment about every four minutes. It turned out YouTube had featured the Large Hadron Rap, presumably in anticipation of the LHC start-up. Shortly afterward, CNN posted us on their website. The interviews became something of a blur, but a few highlights include CNN television (alas, too old to still be online), the Associated Press (text here), BBC Radio 4, and National Public Radio. Many publications borrowed information from others, particularly the AP material, Lansing State Journal article (text here), and the first audio interview with O'Reilly media.

By Friday, the week of start-up, the main video was over 2 million views.

There was a surprising amount of interest from countries that are not predominantly English-speaking, and I was interviewed by publications in Brazil, Spain, Germany, Italy, China, Austria, and Finland among others. There was also interest in translating the rap. I don't know what became of the Italian project, but Ron Vonk (and colleagues) of the Netherlands added Dutch subtitles, Viviane Thivent's team at the Cite-Sciences made a French-subtitled version, Carlos Sicilia of Venezuela made a Spanish rap, and Maria Cristina's team in Brazil made a very different Portuguese translation. In July, just as the rap closed its first year online, Michael "PerpetuumMobile2009" made a German translation.

Teachers from elementary school to college professors have brought the rap into their classrooms, and researchers have incorporated it into their talks. Occasionally, students are inspired enough to make science raps of their own. It's rewarding to see them share our enthusiasm for science.

After September 10th, the experiment and accelerator groups were planning celebrations to mark the shift from construction to operation of their machines. CMS, ATLAS, and the LHC groups invited me to perform onstage. It was an honor to share the stage with Lyn Evans during the last of these, as he is the head honcho for the Large Hadron Collider.

I was also asked to speak about science rap at SciCom08 in Vienna. You can see the presentation with links the materials that were (supposed to be) embedded. I presented on science rap again at the Move On! conference in Stockholm.

Moderate interest has continued, and it showed up in a few 2008 news roundups, also featured on YouTube a second time. The video has slowly climbed to 5 million and still gets over a thousand views most days.

Crazy.