on fort building
helloheather went on a retreat to Oregon, IL this past weekend, being gone from Friday evening until late Saturday evening (having driven 2 hours in the fog at a snails pace).
This was the first time Nate and I were home alone.
We did not thwart the bumbling efforts of two would-be criminal types. John Hughes would not have been impressed.
Still, we had fun. I built a fort in our front room on Friday night and Nate and I had a camp-out. He did ask if we were going to have a camp-fire but alas, prudence dictated no open flame in the foyer.
I built our fort out of the kitchen chairs, a blanket, a couple strong clips, and our Therm-a-rest (tm) sleeping pads. It was fun. I have very fond memories of my dad building me a fort like this when I was a kid and it was nice to be able to do this for Nate.
Most of the time we just hung out. We played a lot of Cars (tm) which he's /really/ into right now. This was, in part, because I gave him a new car ("Sheriff") as a gift for the weekend. We also visited with another dad, who's wife was on the weekend retreat, and had lunch with him at the Burger King (which has a play area).
We had so much fun with the fort that we slept there again Saturday night, even though helloheather had returned home.
Homecoming 2008
It's 80 deg. F in October and I wish it could last a little bit longer.
This weekends weather made for a very enjoyable visit to my alma mater. I partook in such hedonistic delights as: regular (not diet) pop and apple pie before lunch. I was out of control, I know, which is why I'm having a salad for lunch today (and not one that has been deep-fried or anything!).
I (nervously) visited the Physics Department for the first time in 10 years and, in the end, it felt really good. Honestly, it felt like I had come home. Change comes subtly to some areas: new computers but the same (reliable and proven) rack of cables hang on the wall of the main lab room. New lights in the stairwells, and a painted walls, but the same doors, same signs, same smells of physics.
I wasn't able, however, to get over to the Geography department. While I was there just a couple years ago to see the new addition dedicated, the timing didn't work out during this visit.
We were able to spend the weekend visiting with a close group of friends all at one location. All 8 children were able to play together and all 10 adults were able to relax and chat. It was a great get together.
In Celebration of the Large Hadron Collider
Today, September 10th, 2008 marks the beginning of the worlds, and histories, largest and most expensive scientific experiment ever.
Today, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland, comes on-line.
One of the main detectors, and indeed a fundamental part LHC, is called CMS: Compact Muon Solenoid. At the end-caps of the detector are cathode-strip chambers (CSC) used to measure muon rates and positions.
photographer: unknown
The end-caps on CMS are very large and no one had ever built CSC's as large as they needed to be for the detector. So a group of scientists at Fermilab (FNAL) in Batavia, IL was set to working on the problem (as a part of the overall, and very large, involvement by the US).
And, as it so happened, my application for summer employment (following my sophomore year at Valparaiso University) at FNAL was approved and I was assigned to the group studying the cathode-strip chambers. It was easily the single most exciting job I have ever had and possibly ever will have. I was at Fermilab, one of the premier locations for particle physics, working with real scientists, taking real measurements, collaborating, exploring, and in the end, (in conjunction with an undergrad from Purdue) writing a technical paper on the subject for the CMS project.
The title of the paper is: Study of the T0 Cathode Strip Chamber Prototype at FNAL and, while all the technical papers used to be available at the USCMS site, they don't appear to be any longer. I don't know how the design changed after I left (I did not keep in touch with the group) nor do I even know if anyone else even read my report. To be honest, I don't really care (especially about the last part.) My roll was as minor as one could have, but I had a roll nonetheless. The experience of that summer put me most of a semester ahead of everyone entering Nuclear Physics Lab in the fall and afforded me a taste what being a scientist was all about. Not a month goes by that I don't, in some way, reflect on that lost dream.
I have a PDF of the paper saved somewhere, but cannot immediately find it. Fortunately for me, the web provided another location: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/. Thank you Pennsylvania State University.
Study of the T0 Cathode Strip Chamber Prototype at FNAL.
So here's to science and here's to scientific discovery. May the work of the thousands upon thousands of Large Hadron Collider scientists and engineers bear wondrous and extraordinary fruit.
Polaroid film to be gone forever
I have written about the demise of certain types of Polaroid film before. The company that purchased Polaroid a few years ago has been slowly and surely eliminating film types.
But now it seems that all remaining film lines will be no more.
Though Fuji still makes their instant film, they certainly have never had the variety that Polaroid offered. The article and one from the AP states that Polaroid would be interested in licensing their film to another manufacturer, so perhaps a line or two will live on.
http://lnk.nu/news.yahoo.com/ioh
I have many fond memories of being at my Grandma and Grandpa Bernhard's watching (with amazement) the image on integral film take form.