| Students:
Chris Johns (Physics) Kelly Greenland (Physics) Shawn Pickering (Applied Physics) Tom Walker (Physics) |
Faculty: Dr. John Reid |
| Intinerary | |||
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| Friday 6-Jan-06 |
Drive | ||
| Saturday 7-Jan-06 |
Chicago |
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| Sunday 8-Jan-06 |
Chicago |
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| Monday 9-Jan-06 |
FNAL |
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| Tuesday 10-Jan-06 |
ANL |
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| Wednesday 11-Jan-06 |
Drive | ||
Ended up at FNAL around 8PM.
Guard didn't want to let us in because we had no ID. He wanted us to wait til Monday, but
we told him we were staying on-site, so he kindly and much to our relief, let us through.
We drove to the FNAL "high rise"
and got our rooms from the Communications office. They also had our ID, but we didn't know
that then.
We were very glad to unload our stuff in dorm 4 of the "village". There we met Sarab. He told us of a Chineese restaurant in Batavia, which we went looking for. Although I was once very familiar with the area (having lived there for 4 years) I got us lost. Ended up heading toward Aurora and had to stop for directions several times. Tired, but still in good humor, we finally found the place right where Sarab said it was. There we tried all kinds of new foods. We shared and stuffed ourselves. We all brought leftovers back to the dorm - something we would do a lot this trip.
I crashed and the students went over the User's Center to play pool and relax. When they came back,
they stayed up to the wee hours, having fun and arguing and discussing physics with Sarab til the wee hours.
In the morning I found napkins coverd with Feynam diagrams. I was proud!
We drove over to the high rise and went up to the 15th floor to the visitor's area. There we saw several things on display and got a great vista of the lab, where the 4km Tevatron ring was clearly visible. I showed them the other main features of the site visible and discussed the general layout. We also discussed some detector physics and cosmic ray physics.
Next was lunch. We drove out Rt 59 and Chris suggested Boston Market for what was now lunch. The place hit all our spots.
In the process of looking around for things as we drove and changed lines, etc., we probably didn't fit in well with the typical city driving. However, we quickly granted ourselves immunity from disparraging looks with the cry, "We're from Pennsylvania!". It worked for us.
Next we drove into Chicago. It was fun to see the city come into view. We drove south to Soldier Stadium (da Bears) and parked. We decided to buy City Pass tickets at the Shedd Acquarium so we could save some money and yet see a lot of museums. I wasn't so sure about the idea, but as usual, the students were right - it was a great idea. We walked to Adler Planetarium and saw a show. We all were a bit disappointed, wanting to see stars, but the show was more of a slide show with the stars as a backdrop. (A very nice backdrop.)
The big decision of the day was whether or not to bring our coats. Chris is the only one that opted not
to. Although the Windy City was kind, and the temperature was certainly mild for January, it was
still breezy and chilly. Poor Chris. We showed him our sympathies by laughing at him and walking
slowly to Shed Acquarium.
At Shed Acquarium Chirs was the lucky one. All the kids in the universe were there.
The place was crowded and it was hot wearing or
carrying our coats. (For some reason no one thought of checking our coats.)
We were there til closing and must have seen every darn fish in the place. Just before we left we
all stood and watched a group of otters splashing and diving and playing and eating shrimp. It looked
like they had life all figured out.
Drove back to FNAL and decided on Mexican for dinner. Again we tried all kinds of new things and pigged out. Again we had leftovers for the Dorm 4 refrigerator.
Last stop was at Target where we all five of us searched the ilses for a scented candle for my dorm room. My dorm room had remnants for previous residents. Vanilla did the trick.
Decided to get an early start on the museums on Sunday so we all hit the hay when we got back to the dorm.
It was soooo relaxing and a nice contrast to yesterday. Kelly and I leisurely walked through the Native American and Eskimos exhibits. After that we somehow all magically met up on the second floor next to Sue, the skull of their T-rex. We shared our experiences and then headed out into the wind for a brisk, but scenic walk through Grant Park to downtown to visit the Art Institute.
At the Art Institute, once again, we split up, even Tom and Shawn. Once again the
place was not crowded at all. We all greatly enjoyed the place. I spent just about all of my time
with the impressionsits. At one point I was all alone in a room full of Renoir's. Nobody but me.
Now and then we came across each other. I ran into Tom and we looked over the elaborate model of the museum complex on display. Just before leaving I asked Chirs to take a high resolution image of my favorite painting, Resting by Antonio Mancini. (To each his own.) We were running out of time, but he asked me to take a picture for him. So, we ran way to the back of the museum and I got a shot of him in along side of American Gothic. (To each his own.)
(Two years later Shawn confessed that he spent his time in the photography and surrealilsm areas - now we know!)
Next stop was the Muesum of Science and Industry. For this we walked back to the car after a short
diversion to view the new art/architecture in the park - the "wind blown" amphitheater and the giant "bean"
as wel called it. All smooth reflective surfaces. Pretty neat.
Kelly and Chris took turns throughout yesterday and today riding shotgun, helping me navigate and looking for signs. Light traffic helped, too. In no time we made it south the the museum. Once again we split up. Once again Chris put on his ipod and happily wandared away. I hit the Omnimax. I talked everyone else out of going so they could see the museum instead. Felt guilty afterward because the movie was quite good (Ocean Oasis). At the agreed upon time we all met up again and shared our experiences. Before leaving I dragged all our tired souls back to the space area where we saw several original capsules from the Mercury and Apollo missions.
Museum time was now over. We got in the car and headed to Gino's for pizza with Chris
now as shotgun. Along the way my freind Jeff Fortner from Argonne Lab called from the restaurant.
We met him there a few minutes later. Hadn't seen him in years.
Another place that was untypically uncrowded. No wait
at all for tables (usually there's an hour wait). Jeff and I caught up on things while the students
purused the menu. Had an excellent waiter that even met Kelly's request for a crayon. This we needed
so Chris could proudy add the LHU Physics Club's name to the miriad of wall graffiti.
I also got my first cell phone voiced message. Asking directions from the amused students, I fumbled
with the phone until I somehow deleted the message. (They'll call back if it's important.)
We orded two pizzas and enjoyed ourselves in coversation during the 45 minutes wait. The wait was worth it! It was delicous! The best pizza in the universe. (A statement that is consistent with all observations.)
Leaving stuffeed and happy we headed to Second City. We got seats right against the stage. Chris and Shawn were literllay resting their elbows on the stage. The players put on a great show. Lots of laughs from political comedy to just plain silly. They were really good. After their regular "planned" show they did their usual improve, which was great. They took suggestions from the audience and went with them.
Final stop of the evening was the Hancock Building. This was the last thing on our City Pass. Once again,
we found the place virtually emtpy. Got a great night time view of the beautivul city lights from
the 93 floor all to ourselves. We
stared for a while and headed back to FNAL. A long day.
Linac
Shortly thereafter Dr. Stephen Pordes showed up. Stephen was one of my mentors from my thesis
experiment at FNAL (E760). Jean left and Stephen started his tour. There in the atrium at the
breakfast tables he began a lecture on the basic principles of particle accelerators. As usual, he
was brilliant at explaining rather complex physics and engineering in basic physics terms.
Gradually we moved on to the linac (linear accelerator). We started at the Cockcroft-Walton accelerator and worked our way along the linac. We caught a glimpse of the linear part of the linear accelerator emerging from the Cockcroft-Walton accelerator. We had a brief discussion of the clysterons and power supplies in the hallway above the linac. We completed our tour at the FNAL control center.
CDF (Collider Detector Facility)
We got hold of Jean again and she took us over to CDF. This is one of two giant experiments
on the Tevatron ring. Here protons and anti-protons collide at a center-of-mass energy of
about 1.9 TeV. This is currently the largest energy for such collisions.
At CDF we met Dr. Camille Ginsburg. (She and I were grad students together on E760). In the detector hall we viewed the detector asemply area and spent a fair amount of time discussing the detector models and actual detectors that were on display. Camille, Jean and I discussed the physics of the detectors with the students jumping in with questions.
We also went up into the CDF control room where the computers monitor the detectors. Camille explained the overall setup and we got a good explanation of the event display were we saw realtime collisions of protons and anti-protons displayed as hadron jets in the detectors.
Next was lunch at the High Rise. The students grabbed a table of their own while I was fortunate enough meet up with two former colleagues from E760 (Dr. Keith Gollwitzer and Dr. Steve Werkema.) I joined them for lunch and we caught up on things.
TD (Technical Division) - Magnet Facilty
After lunch we joind Camille at TD for a tour for the magnet facility by Dr. Mike Tartaglia.
We started in the lobby where we had a half hour discussion of the principles of superconducting
magnets. Then we spent about 1.5 hours on the floor seeing how they are constructed and tested
including how they used extremely sensitive instruments to measure the magnetic fields produced.
We also got a good close up look at the construction of dipole magnets (used for bending particles and keeping them in a ring) and quadrapole magnets (used for focussing particle beams). The last stop was the area where they were making the magnets for the CERN LHC detector (the next big detector in high energy physics). Mike gave the students samples of superconducting magnet wire with a warning that under the right conditions (which he described) they can be flamable. The students were pretty happy about that and eagerly grabbed pieces.
DiSet (Silicon Detector Facility) & the Bubble Chamber
We took a very brief break at the dorm then head over to SiDet. There we met
Dr. Marv Johnson. He showed us the clean rooms where they were testing and assembling
the detectors. A very expensive and elaborate facility.
He also took us about back where we got the see the old 15 foot bubble chamber. A bubble chamber is a device used to track particles. Particles pass through liquid hydrogen (in this case) that is superheated and form bubbles along their paths. This bubblechamber is a bit of physics history. It's one of the largest bubble chambers ever built. It is no longer in use and is now on display outside. It turns out Marv actually work with the chamber in the past. We got a close look at it and climbed around it and looked underneath the see the large piston.
Dinner at Pal Joey's with Camille
After another short rest at the dorm we joined Camille and her husband Dan (another former
colleague from E760) for dinner at Pal Joey's. This is one of the good restaurants out near the
lab that I used to frequent in my grad student research days. Camille and Dan brought along
their son, Emil and their daughter. We sat next to the daughter's teachers, so she
had a blast talking and playing with them. Meanwhile Chris, Tom, Shawn and Kelly
entertained Emil. Their was a lot of laughing at that end of the table, including when Kelly
did her little saying. (Peter went through the door and his brother Repeat followed. Who went
last?) Dan, Camille, and I caught up on old times, etc.
Pool
We ended the evening at the User's Center where we all played pool. Between the 5 of us we kept
swapping out someone and played various combinations of teams. Of course, we discussed particle
physics collisions as related to billiards. Kelly was a first time player and we all coached her.
Turns out we created a monster. By the end of the evening she was knocking down 3 at a time
and running the table.
In the Visitor's Center we met Dr. Jeff Fortner by friend from grad school at Penn State. We spent about 20 minutes looking through the intersting displays including photos of Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago. Jeff helped us get our visitor ID's and we were off.
Microscopy Lab
Dr. Dean Miller took us around the microscopy lab. We spent a long wonderful time with
him as he passionately described a wide variety of electron microscopes. (Mostly SEM-scanning electron
microscope, and TEM-trasmisstion electron microscopes.) We went to many lab rooms and visited
many reserachers. At each place we discussed what they were studying and why they were using
the particular machine that was there. In one lab we saw a large TEM that was very custom designed
by the guy that was operating it. State-of-the-art stuff. We saw many images of the materials they
were studying. The images showed crystal, molecular and sometimes atomic structure. Dean, with the
help of the people we visited, explained how they all worked, and how they prepared the samples.
We all got a kick out of one machine that had an X-box controller connected to it - like a video game.
Light Source
Jeff took us to the Light Source next. This is a about a 100 yard diameter electron particle beam ring that
bends the path of the electrons to produce a coherent source of photon (light), which is used to
study materials (scattering). All around the ring, at each kink, are labs with experiements set up.
(Each kink changes the electron's velocity and a charge particle changing its velocity is therefore
accelerating. Accelerating charge is the cause of electromagnetic radiation.)
There were several dozen experiments around the ring. We thought it was funny that bicycles were parked
everywhere for people to use to get around within the building. Jeff took us to his area where they
are studying the stability of storage methods for radioactive waste. He spent a while explaining
how he takes data and how his studies were going. We finished the morning with a great lunch at
the on-site Mariot hotel restaurant.
Intense Pulse Neutron Source
Dr. Jim Richardson gave us a tour of the Intense Pulse Neutron Source next. First we spent a half hour
or so in the hallway discussing the physics of the facility. The students had seen quite a lot by now
and were putting things together pretty well. They asked qood questions and got a lot out of
the discussion. I even quizzed them on dipole and quadrapole magnets. We spent a brief time in
the experiment hall - a place that reminded me very much of the AGS Brookhaven. A sort of
warehouse looking place with lots of concrete sheilding and "Do Not Linger" signs.
Chemical Engineering Division
Our last stop was a visit with Dr. Allen Bakel and Dr. Candido Pereira who were working with
Jeff to study ways of making storage of nuclear waste materials more safe. We had a fascinating hallway
discussion of many scientific and even political issues. We also got to view the room where they
have remote mechanical arms used in handling certain materials.
That was the end of the tours and we were all exhasted. We said our farewells to Jeff and head "home" to Fermilab.
We left Kelly at the dorm to relax while Chris, Shawn, Tom and I headed out to dinner. We decided we wanted to try Thai. We asked around and were directed again to Batavia. This time we knew how to get there, but we did have to stop in town to ask for directions to the restaurant.
We had a great final dinner. I think it was Chris who said that this was a great trip, but it will be great to get home. We all agreed. We had fun exploring the menu. We decided, in the spirit of trying new things, to order red and green soda. Chris and Tom got green, and Shawn and I got the red. Not bad. We ordered a few apetizers and shared and we did the same with the meals. Good stuff. We left very full and in good spirits.
We finished the evening with a final trip to the User's Center for pool and ping pong. We asked Sarab to join us. Chris and I played each other in pool for a good while and Shawn and Tom did the same at the other table. Sarab joined us and we took up ping pong. I lost a tough game to him, which tired me out, so I decided to call it a day.
Whew!