Out of the ordinary: ATLAS LEGO® model

As part of an outreach project at the Niels Bohr Institute Sascha Mehlhase recently designed and built a model of the ATLAS experiment in LEGO® bricks.
It illustrates all details, from the muon and magnet system to the innermost pixel detector. Its key features: about 9500 pieces; roughly 1:50 in scale; cost: about 2000 € (funded by the high energy physics group at the Niels Bohr Institute); 1 m x 0.5 m x 0.5 m in size; approximately 33 hours construction time.

ATLAS is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The ATLAS detector is searching for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy.
ATLAS will learn about the basic forces that have shaped our Universe since the beginning of time and that will determine its fate. Among the possible unknowns are the origin of mass, extra dimensions of space, unification of fundamental forces, and evidence for dark matter candidates in the Universe.