UW Daily Update Wednesday Nov.19: Lab tours!

1.     UW Daily Update Wednesday Nov. 19

a.     Wake up, eat peanut butter banana, go to physics. Talk about non-inertial frames of reference (if I measure an object’s motion from an accelerating frame of reference, it looks like it’s accelerating in the opposite direction as my frame even if there are no forces on it. Thus it doesn’t remain at constant velocity if there are no forces on it, and it violates the law of inertia.) Interesting stuff.

b.     Do CS hw.

c.      Do last physics lab on more angular quantities.

d.     Meet up at the SPS for lab tours! Yay! We trek over to the previously unidentified building below Haggett that turns out to be a rat’s nest of physics labs.

e.     After waiting 20min for the tardy professor, a grad student shows up and takes us to the Axion detector experiment. The Axion is a hypothetical particle with specific properties that might make up dark matter. We can’t see it unless it decays, and it decays very slowly. But we can force it to emit an electron when it hits a strong magnetic field. The experimenters have set up such a field and a detector. However, the axion will only emit an electron when hit with a field of the right frequency, which depends on the axion’s unknown mass. So the researchers have to comb through all the frequencies corresponding to the range of likely masses looking for tiny perturbations in the magnetic field owing to the emission of an electron. To distinguish these perturbations from thermal noise, the experiment has to be cooled to a few Kelvin (a few degrees above absolute zero) with liquid helium.

f.      Despite the sophistication of the experiment, the workshop looks completely hacked together. The grad students talk about doing the plumbing themselves. Stuff just sits on tables where it could be broken. Racks of electronics surround the command center: a folding table with two computers and a shabby folding chair. It’s pretty neat.

g.     Afterwards, we head back to the physics buildings and explore some of the labs there. All the labs are relatively small. Every surface and shelf is crammed with random-looking goo, whether it’s optical equipment and screwdrivers, samples of glass-like materials, bottles of chemicals, or giant specialized boxes of hardware. In one lab, a liquid helium cycling pump keeps up a constant whir-whir-whir that must drive experimenters crazy. The research is neat—magnetometers used to image biological structures, electronics made of thin sheets of graphene invisible to the naked eye.

h.     We head to the physics building and hear a panel of professors and grad students talk about how to get involved in research. It sounds like interest and technical skills trump big-picture knowledge of the science—good for me, who may not be majoring in physics.

i.       I hustle back to my room for a quick Skype with Grace, then head down to the 8 for dinner, then back up to the room for an evening of homework.

I write this log and go to bed.