On April 5, 2018, the HERMES/SBS Ring-Imaging CHerenkov (RICH) detector began it’s journey from UConn, where it has resided for the last three years, to Jefferson Lab in Newport News, VA, where it will undergo additional testing and preparation before being used for charged particle identification in two approved experiments in JLab’s Hall A. It took two pallet jacks and five workers to move the detector out of the space it was occupying in the UConn physics building and onto a flatbed truck via the physics loading dock. After a short trip to the G&F equipment warehouse in Waterbury, CT, the detector will be placed on a custom-built skid and loaded onto an enclosed freight truck for the nearly 500-mile journey to Jefferson Lab.

Unfortunately, my phone battery died before the detector was loaded onto the truck, so I was unable to photograph the operation of three workers pushing the weight of a light pickup truck up the incline of the loading dock! (The truck had a winch available in the event that the workers could not push the detector up the ramp…)

 

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