Staff and their work

Multimedia exhibition:
first stage completed

At the end of the year, the famous interactive exhibition "JINR basic facilities" will be dismantled. It turns out, this is to allow it to keep successfully functioning in the adjacent Cultural Centre "Mir".

The exhibition has welcomed its guests for 55 months, during which time it has become a landmark of Dubna and a must-see for JINR guests. Just think - the exhibition has been visited by over 11,000 people! Among them were plenipotentiary representatives of JINR Member States, delegations from embassies, governments, scientific and educational centres from Russia and other countries, cultural and artistic figures, as well as student and school groups. And the photographs were incredible. The reflections from the screens, backlighting and numerous reflections on the panels made a cosmic atmosphere, lending a magical air to the scientific projects. And the Institute's photographers captured so many emotions on the visitors' faces! Some of them were featured on the front page of our newspaper as photo of the week.

The dismantling of the exhibition provided an opportunity to take stock of its work and to recall how the exhibits had been created. A software engineer at VBLHEP and the architect of the exhibition "JINR basic facilities" Nikita SIDOROV will share his thoughts.

Exhibition architect Nikita Sidorov

History

The exhibition was initially conceived as a gift to our city and JINR for the Institute's 65th anniversary, celebrated on 26 March, 2021. With the support of Directorate and Laboratories, preparations for the exhibition started 18 months before the event. The content and architectural design were developed by Yury Panebrattsev's team: the employees of the UC Department of Educational Programmes, VBLHEP staff members and InterGraphics LLC, with the participation of Scientific Secretaries and responsible staff members of Laboratories.

Concept

The exhibition's goal is to showcase models of each laboratory's core facilities and to explain the essence of the experiments implemented. Of course, the Institute's scientific research is quite extensive and it would be impossible to cover everything during a visit to the exhibition. Therefore, only the most important, flagship projects were presented. The core facilities chosen were: the DC-280 cyclotron (FLNR), the NICA Accelerator Complex (VBLHEP), the IBR-2 reactor (FLNP), the Baikal Neutrino Telescope (DLNP) and the Govorun Supercomputer (MLIT).

In collaboration with BLTP, we developed an exhibit chronicling the most important events in the Institute's history and with LRB, we developed an exhibit dedicated to the Laboratory's basic scientific fields (astrobiology, cosmic radiation and radiobiology). The models were designed not to accurately reproduce the facility's appearance but rather to ensure that its form, sometimes even abstract retained recognizability and associations. In the case of the Baikal Neutrino Telescope, for example, it was proposed to recreate a piece of the underwater world with real detectors provided by the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems.

Interactive technologies and 3D animation, displayed on monitor screens located at key components of the facility models, allowed showing the physical meaning and key stages of the experiments.

What happens inside, where the human eye can't see? How are superheavy elements synthesized? How are astrophysical neutrinos detected? What happens inside a collider detector? How can one peer inside a meteorite using a neutron reactor? How does cosmic radiation affect living organisms? What is a petabyte of scientific data and how can one extract the Higgs Boson from it? Our exhibition was intended to answer these questions.

Development

In the summer of 2020, we were assigned a small room at VBLHEP, where we began creating our first exhibit dedicated to the NICA Accelerator Complex. The main idea was to show a beam passing through the accelerator using a group of unusual, elongated monitors, giving an idea of the facility's scale (as we all know, the NICA Accelerator Complex is over 1,000 meters long). A large screen located in the centre artistically and visually showed nuclear collisions and particle production in the MPD detector.

The main technical challenge was developing a hardware and software system that would synchronize animations across multiple screens. This development was the basis for subsequent exhibits. Over time, due to the delivery of ordered equipment, our laboratory space became cramped and SIM Office kindly offered us about 150 square meters of space in the former trade and exhibition complex "Parus". This space became our forge, our "multimedia workshop", filled with everything that helps to bring ideas to life: drawings, tools, equipment and building materials. The large space allowed to assemble and debug mock-ups of large-scale exhibits. Initially, each exhibit frame was constructed from cardboard and wood, housing the equipment and controls. After final debugging, the refined drawings were sent to contractors in our city for the fabrication of metal frames and cladding. The mock-up of the exhibit was then disassembled and the next one assembled.

Various visualization technologies were used to create the exhibits: holograms, projections, 3D, augmented reality and virtual reality. In 2020, a breakthrough in the production of virtual reality glasses occurred, with the introduction of standalone headsets that don't require a constant connection to a computer. This technological leap allowed us to create virtual tours of the Institute's core facilities and of course, the most interesting was the tour of the Neutrino Telescope located on Lake Baikal. In total, the exhibit involved over 50 graphics output devices and over 30 personal computers, necessitating the development of a centralized control system for such a large number of devices. Such a large amount of equipment also needed to be housed. By a lucky coincidence, renovations to the small hall of the Cultural Centre "Mir" were being completed just in time for the Institute's anniversary and it was decided to house our exhibit in this spacious and beautiful space. Directorate and staff of the Cultural Centre welcomed the exhibition with open arms and it officially opened in full on 26 March, 2021.

Building exhibits. 13 January, 2021

Lecture Hall

After the first exhibition presentations, it became clear to us that, given the complexity of JINR's research and experiments, it was necessary to begin with an introductory lecture about the Institute and the fundamentals of nuclear physics. Since the audience was quite diverse, we needed to do some preparation, explaining the most basic concepts using multimedia presentations: what an atom is, how new elements are synthesized, how the universe is formed in a laboratory and much more. Ultimately, the exhibition evolved into a so-called "multimedia lecture hall" and tours lasted 1-1.5 hours. Over 600 such tours have been carried out at the exhibition.

During their visits to JINR, students from Russia, Egypt, South Africa, Serbia, Belarus and other countries visited the exhibition. Having gained an understanding of what goes on inside our core facilities, the students better understood the laboratory tours and were able to understand the experiments more clearly.

Students from Egypt. Tour conducted by Ksenia Klygina. May 2023

However, the largest number of visitors have been Dubna schoolchildren. Surely, the lectures have been adapted to the students' level, as the groups have included students from grades 1 to 11 and some classes have even returned. The most challenging group turned out to be from a kindergarten. Our colleagues had strongly encouraged us to hold an event for children and we obliged, even though the scientific context is quite complex for such young children. Despite the complexity of this seemingly impossible task, we managed to hold the children's attention for 45 minutes that is not easy for visitors of this age. The children were delighted and I hope they remembered their introduction to science in its most engaging way.

Future

In 2026, renovations to the Great Hall at the Cultural Centre "Mir" will begin and we need to free up the Small Hall for city events. However, in the foreseeable future, the exhibition will be relocated and developed. It's worth emphasizing that this project has resulted in the development of permanent and mobile JINR multimedia exhibitions (the "JINR Hall" at the Dubna Museum of Archaeology and Local History, the exhibition "NICA" at the VBLHEP site and the exhibition "JINR-South Africa" in Cape Town, among others). Ideas have emerged for developing other popular science spaces. A major project, our dream, is also awaiting its time: the establishment of a permanent Science Centre for schoolchildren in Dubna that would facilitate the in-depth study of scientific disciplines.

Perhaps, the Cultural Centre "Mir" has never had a temporary exhibition lasting for nearly five years! It's a truly successful project that we call "JINR's educational core facility."

In conclusion, I would like to thank the team that has contributed to the development of exhibition and has supported its functioning: Evgeny Dolgy, Sergey Balalykin, Oleg Smirnov, Alexander Shilov, Pavel Semchukov, Maxim Vasiliev, Alexey Platonov, Yury Politsin and his team, our long-standing coordinator Alexandra Sidorova, lecturers Tatyana Strokovskaya and Ksenia Klygina, a large team of designers and methodologists and our Director Yury Panebrattsev. We also express our gratitude to all the staff of the Cultural Centre "Mir" and the JINR Sports Club. And to the visitors of our exhibition, we want to say - we are not saying goodbye. See you soon!

Photos by Elena PUZYNINA
and Igor LAPENKO

From the guestbook

A huge thank to the developers and organizers of the interactive exhibition "JINR basic facilities"! We should join forces to develop this powerful project! Wish you success and good luck!

Dmitry Kurochkin, Vice President of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
4 February, 2021

***

A fascinating journey into the world of science and technology of physics experiments. Each exhibit is fascinating in its own way. You could spend hours exploring each one. A special thanks to the tour guides, they are highly qualified and engaging. We are grateful for this knowledge!

D.O.Krivenkov, M.V.Lepeshkina
21 April, 2021

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We thank the event organizers for a fascinating journey into the microcosm! All the exhibits and interactive objects at the exhibition sparked genuine curiosity. Thank you for a wonderful experience!

2nd grade pupils of Gymnasium No. 11 and their parents
22 April, 2021

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It's been a very enlightening tour! Science opens up a new future and there's no reason why our scientists cannot cooperate. I look forward to future cooperation between JINR and Japan.

Ambassador of Japan
November, 2025

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We want it to be regular!!! The exhibition is awesome, the tour guide is even cooler. Hooray for the physicists from JINR!!! It was awesome!!! Like the cyclotron.

A huge thank to the organizers; we really enjoyed the exhibition. We should organize events like it more often.

Students of School No. 7
28 February, 2022

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We express our gratitude to the group of enthusiasts that organized the tour of the interactive exhibition. They made the impossible possible and realized humanity's dream of peering inside the atom. We wish you creative success, amazing discoveries and the realization of all your dreams!

School of Physicists of Kamchatka Krai
3 April, 2023