July 31, 2012. Today we started our day in fermilab's Science and Education Center playing science based games. We played games like Primordial Soup, Natures Scale, Rutherford’s Scattering experiment, Probes with Pinheads, and Take a cosmic Shower. In Natures Scale, for example, you had to place a Electron and a quark, a protons and a neutron, a nucleus, an atom, DNA molecule, a cell, a heart, and a human in order of smallest to largest. Then we talked to Dave, a Neutrino physicist. He answered all of our questions about Neutrinos and explained his search for sterile neutrinos. Next we went to fermilab’s art exhibit, where our objective was to look at all of the works of art and discover the repeating object which was a base in all of the works (it was a parabola or arch depending on who you are).
After lunch we attended a lecture for undergraduates on electrical engineering given by Theresa Shaw. We learned that electrical engineering has many different fields like power, computer, control, electronics, and telecommunications to name just a few. Also she explained details about her experiments on CMS. Later we learned about the many summer internship opportunities available to undergraduates at Fermilab. I found it interesting that fermilab will completely pay for your housing and rental car while you work at the lab and also pays at least $470 per week. Most internships are 10 weeks long starting the first Monday of June and ending the second week of August. Also if you are given an internship one year and you do well they might invite you back the next year. Our next speaker has ten interns working for him. Brenden Casey works on high energy/power physics. High energy physics is an exploratory field. In past years fermilab has competed with the LHC in high energy but recently has decided to shift their emphasis to high power instead. Fermilab’s upgrade will possess twice the power than the previous one. One project fermilab is involved in is g-2 which will measure muons more precisely. In efforts to save resources fermilab will receive Brookhaven’s magnet ring which took ten years to make. According to the g-2 experiment all elementary particles possess four things: mass, charge, lifetime, and magnetic charge. When working on an experiment you either have to buy your equipment or make it yourself so when you can get equipment that is already made it’s a bonus! On an ending note Casey urged us to contact our congress people and fight for a LBL (Long Base Line) in South Dakota.
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