Sorry You Missed It!

Trip to Fermilab was great - wish more people could have come!

First there was a talk on string theory by Joseph Lykken. The talk started with the very, very basics, since this was for general audiences -- and there were lots of kids in the audience. But he got to some interesting physics and there were some good questions -- some from those kids! In answer to one question, Lykken seemed to say that in string theory, all known particles have zero mass. And that the massive particles the theory predicts are way more massive than anything now known. Either I misunderstood him or string theory has a massive problem (hehe!).

After the talk, we toured the lab. We saw
*the Foucault pendulum. Every time I see it, I want one at Augie.
*cool artistic and asthetic features to a high-tech lab. Apparently, Wilson embodied the liberal arts ideal.
*useful applications of particle physics to cancer treatment -- it's not all about finding a smaller Who.
*and, of course, lots of high-tech physics, electronics, etc.

We also got a chance to "ask-a-scientist." In this part of the program, there were several Fermilab scientists milling around among the visitors, answering questions (and eating cookies, mmm). I eavesdropped on a bunch of questions and asked some of my own. I did my own small part by helping one scientist answer a question about the relative sizes of the atom and the nucleus - I've tackled that question a hundred times in 103 and 301. If the atom is scaled up to the size of Augie campus, the nucleus is about the size of a marble -- though, of course, I didn't use that example for a total stranger who doesn't know what an Augie is. This discussion prompted my question regarding the length scales that the collisions at Fermilab probe, and the answer was 1/1000th of a Fermi! (That's an attometer, I looked it up.)

Another interesting note about Fermilab scientists was their attitude toward math. Lykken, a theorist, was excited about the elegant math being used in string theory. If you love math and like to see the fascinating things it can do, he said, be a string theorist. On the other hand, the experimentalist who was discussing length scales with us was warning the students not to get discouraged by the amount of math they had to do to be a physicist. The reward of doing awesome particle physics and cosmology was worth the agony of a few math classes, in his opinion. Quite the contrast, huh?

It was too cold to go looking for bison wandering around Fermilab, but if we go back in the spring or fall, I'd like to see them.

Every silver lining has a cloud of course. I was bummed that we broke with Physics Club tradition and didn't go to Dairy Queen. But Alaina and I were very hungry after only eating vending machine beer nuts for lunch, so we went the first place we found -- Subway. I think I counted 10 more Subways we could've stopped at on the way home, too!

Oh, and Cable Road is better plowed than US highway 30 -- Mercer County rocks!