Quantum Diaries

– By Peter Vogel, ICT/Physics teacher at the Notre Dame Regional Secondary School in Vancouver BC

I write this from a desk inside one of the older buildings that make up CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, outside Geneva, Switzerland. Save for the wireless access I have here, the room looks  as if no one has been in here since the 1960s. Two ancient projectors stand at the back of the room, still aimed at the board on which they last projected.

Yet mere metres from my seat, which surely a Nobel laureate or two has graced, is the most complex physics experiment the world has ever seen. Just across the road and around a hundred metres below the surface of this gentle farming countryside, beats the heart of the Large Hadron Collider.

I am fortunate to have been chosen to represent Canada here at CERN for the HST2011 summer high school physics teachers program, a experience quite unlike any I’ve had in more than thirty years of  teaching.

The author, centre, with HST2011 attendees from Australia, the US, Brazil and Slovakia, in front of the faceplate for CERN's Compact Muon Solenoid particle detector on the Large Hadron Collider beam, 100 m below the French countryside near Cessy.

Despite Canada’s obvious presence here at CERN, it seems that I am the first physics teacher to represent the country at this program. To ensure that such representation continues in subsequent years, I am documenting much of what I experience through Twitter (the words “I am  jealous of you” have come up in response), through a blog and through email postings to the BC Association of Physics Teachers mailing list.

Earlier this week I had the distinct pleasure of meeting William Trischuk of the University of Toronto and a representative of the Institute of Particle Physics (one of the agencies that has made possible my trip to CERN). As it turns out, he was here for a regular shift on the ATLAS experiment on the LHC.

It’s been just a week here at HST2011, a blur of acronyms, lectures, experiments, and visits to the most complex equipment I’ve ever seen. It is indeed an amazing experience to be here, and to be able to share  it with colleagues from more than twenty nations makes it all the more enriching.

– The CAP high school/CEGEP teacher award is co-sponsored by APEGBC, the Canadian Association of Physicists, TRIUMF, Merlan Scientific, Perimeter Institute, Nelson Education, and Vernier. The British Columbia and Yukon award is further sponsored by BC Innovation Council. Travel costs were sponsored by the Institute of Particle Physics, as well as TRIUMF & the Perimeter Institute.

– By Jennifer Gagné, Web Publishing Coordinator

I have a new endeavour at TRIUMF — giving tours! I’ve been at TRIUMF for 2 ½ years now; just long enough for the “newness” to wear off, but not nearly long enough to know even half of what happens here, even as part of the communications team. Giving tours is absolutely fantastic! It’s my chance to see the lab through new eyes. I get to share in the excitement of seeing this visually-crazy, mind-expanding, totally-different-than-you-were-expecting place for the first time with visitors.

There really is something tremendous about visiting a high energy physics lab for the first time – I’m convinced there isn’t really anything out there that could prepare you for the menagerie of sights you’ll see. Except, I hear, seeing another physics lab. I’ve been told they’re the same the world over, and seeing pictures of other labs, I have to agree. It personally took me a full three months of working here before I could go behind the fence (to where the cyclotron and all the experiments are) and not be overwhelmed by the wires, the machines you won’t see anywhere else, and the beamlines that bring beams (particles that have been sped to high speeds) everywhere around the lab.

Last week, I had two groups at the two different ends of the age spectrum. The first group was our lovely neighbours down the street at Tapestry, the seniors living community, and a group of Grade 4 students, who showed up in matching uniforms, nametags, and notebooks full of questions. What I love most is rhythm of the tours – it seems to always be the same, regardless of age level or background. It starts with tentative curiosity (“I’ve heard this place was here, and it seems interesting, but I have nooo idea what they do here”), which quickly moves to a growing ‘wow’ factor as we see images of the cyclotron, play with the dancing paperclips, and they begin to get a sense of scale of what we do here (Huge machines, looking at teeny tiny little particles and reactions).

Near the end of the tour, mostly with adults, if we stop by DRAGON (an experiment that recreates the reactions that happen inside of supernova) and I give people a moment to breathe, questions will inevitably come up with questions nearly religious in nature: what’s out there? How did this all come to be? Essentially, the big questions we all ask at one time or another. To me, that’s the greatest reward. When people leave energized, excited, maybe still not quite sure what we do here, but they know it’s cool, they know it’s physics, I know that they have spent their time thinking about questions and ideas they likely would not have been thinking about during a regular day. It’s a fantastic transition from tentativeness to full out excitement and curiosity, and I’m so glad I get to be part of sharing off this crazy, mind-bending place called TRIUMF.

– By Nick Zacchia, Proton Therapy co-op student

“So you shoot people in the face with a cyclotron… AWESOME!” a friend of mine declared matter-of-factly. They had conveniently gleaned over the part where I explained the science behind proton therapy. Although they hadn’t quite got the intricacies of the science correct, they had understood the underlying message; that I have the coolest job in the world. I’m an engineering undergrad who packed up his stuff, got on a plane in Montreal and headed to Vancouver for a summer job at TRIUMF: Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. It’s only been about a week, but I already feel right at home.

I’m at a place where people value science for its own sake. Where no one is afraid to nerd-out. A place where dark matter matters. Where people are excited merely by the prospect of learning. Today I went to a lecture on baryons, tomorrow it is synchrotron physics, the day after it’s something I won’t even pretend to understand. Yet I’m encouraged to attend, to ask questions, to learn all that I can. Next week I’m being trained in radiation protection, not because it’s strictly necessary, but because it’s interesting and will provide insight into things like the situation in Japan. Plus, who doesn’t want to be trained on how to handle nuclear waste?

Really I feel that one of the greatest things about TRIUMF is that it is filled with people who never lost their childhood wonder. The curiosity that we were all born with but which somehow or other gets eroded by time, by life, by the monotony of everyday. But here people are free to let their curiosity get the best of them. It’s what drives the entire lab I think. People wondering about big questions and then going out and finding the answers.

My supervisor told me today that TRIUMF has to produce to stay viable and what TRIUMF produces he said, is scientific papers. Knowledge. Free for the taking. I find something very rewarding in that.

And if that wasn’t enough, TRIUMF is also helping to save people’s lives. Which brings me back to the proton therapy. The “shooting people in the face with a cyclotron”.  Without getting into the details of the procedure, which Wikipedia already does admirably, I’ll just say that using an 18 meter, 4000 ton magnet to create particles capable of destroying eye cancer while leaving the eye and (importantly) the brain intact is pretty sweet. During these treatments the entire facility becomes devoted to these few patients. Patients who, thanks to science, will see another day.

A few years back a friend and I tried to convince everyone to replace the word “cool” with the word “science” in their vocabularies (since they are basically synonymous). It never much caught on as a fad, but I can tell you that working at a particle accelerator is definitely SCIENCE.

By Lena Sitnikova, Outreach Assisistant

I’ll be honest. I’m a design student. When I applied, and later accepted the position of Outreach Assistant at TRIUMF, I envisioned that I would spend my summer quietly working at a small desk somewhere in the corner of some office, cranking out posters while largely oblivious to the physics around me. Well, the small desk was a fairly accurate assumption, the obliviousness – not so much. Having been at TRIUMF a grand total of 6 full workdays, I feel that I already know more than a first-year physics undergrad. It is probably just a feeling though.

Regardless, between the tour-guides, the co-ops and general atmosphere at TRIUMF, I have come to realize just how extensive the wealth of knowledge here is. And what’s even more, it’s all here because of the people. I’ve never really been one of the ‘physics crowd’, so it seemed to me that individuals that spent their days discussing nuclear fission and isotope decay couldn’t be like the “rest of us”. And I was right. Because they’re better! As I’ve discovered, people here at TRIUMF are normal individuals with kids, hobbies, etc., but what sets them apart is their passion for what they do.

Undoubtedly, it is this passion that makes them as easygoing and enthusiastic as I’ve discovered them to be.  And hopefully, after spending a summer here, some of it will rub off on me!