Andy’s Los Alamos Blog

Sorry about the downtime, and thanks for your patience. Edublogs.org is still in the process of changing servers, but everything looks functional (though slow) at this point.

I’ve had a pretty exciting week since my last post, full of good times in and out of the lab. I’ve taken a ton of pictures for you, which you’ll find in my Flickr! albums (see right).

Thanks to those who commented on the last post; you make some interesting points. There are very few classes at universities, and none in high schools, that are likely to discuss anything beyond the Standard Model. And rightfully so; whether dark matter is really WIMPs, axions, or something else entirely, has yet to be shown. That is one thing that makes being a part of this project so exciting. It is absolutely cutting edge, and something you can’t get in school. If it turns out that dark matter is indeed WIMPs, as we suspect, it will prove that there is something more fundamental than the Standard Model (what they teach in university particle physics classes), and revolutionize the field.

That said, one can understand a lot of the concepts of direct detection of dark matter solely from high school physics. As I described the detector before, WIMPs come in from space and pass through the detector (filled with a bunch of atoms), and occasionally one hits a nucleus, releasing a tiny bit of electromagnetic energy. If you’ve had high school mechanics and electricity/magnetism, you can recognize this as an energy conservation problem. Actually being able to see the energy released in this reaction, and be sure that it’s a WIMP and not anything else, is difficult in practice, but conceptually easy. If you really want to get a better handle on what’s going on, read up on atomic and nuclear physics; you can understand a lot more than you’d think based on HS or introductory college electricity and magnetism.

I really like the suggestion of doing outside research and getting extra credit to learn more about this stuff. If you’re in a position to do so, ask your teacher if that’s an option. It’s important to learn the fundamentals of physics first, because everything builds up. However, it’s equally important to look ahead, and get perspective on why what you’re learning is so important and worthwhile.

Here in LA, the morning lectures continue, and we’ve heard about such things as climate modeling, quark-gluon plasmas, superfluids, and more. The lectures are pretty interesting, and cover an incredible range of topics; it’s unfortunate, though, that things must be discussed in very general terms and that it takes away so much would-be lab time.

In the lab, I’ve been continuing my work with photomultiplier tubes, and got to design a pretty sweet optics setup for testing them. I’m looking forward to getting all my parts and putting everything together. Frankly, I’m still waiting to hear what’s legit for public disclosure, so please pardon my lack of specifics on my research so far. More physics soon, really.

Outside the lab, I’m had a very active week. On Wednesday, I hiked up Pajarito Mountain Ski Area, Los Alamos’ 10,400 ft. local ski hill, with people from work. From the top, one can see a tiny Los Alamos from one side, and the beautiful Valles Caldera from the other. Hence, on Saturday, I made the same hike with some fellow summer students, and brought two cameras. Still waiting on the non-digital pictures (which I’ll also post), but I have a bunch of digital ones up on Flickr!. The views were pretty stunning, with some neat shadows from the thunderstorm (and hail storm) we barely missed. Friday, Sunday, and Monday, I took the bike out for a ride, and have some pictures from Saturday up on Flickr! as well.

Thanks for reading. Please post some comments, and stay tuned for physicsier things…