DASTOW: Welcoming the next generation to the lab

DASTOW will take place this Thursday. Like last year, the program will start with a group photo on the steps of Wilson Hall at 8:45 a.m.

This Thursday, June 21, Fermilab employees will take some time away from working with this generation's great minds to engage with the next generation's inquiring ones.

Daughters and Sons to Work Day promotes science education among youth by inviting Fermilab kids from kindergartners to high-schoolers spend an action-packed day with their parents at a unique workplace--the nation's premier particle physics laboratory." Organizers predict 300 children of all ages will attend the 11th annual DASTOW event at Fermilab. "DASTOW is a great opportunity for children to come see what their parents do at work everyday," said organizer Mary Anne Stowell. "It allows parents and children to spend time together as a family while making science fun and understandable and promoting education and involvement."

From 8:45 a.m. to 2 p.m., participants can expect a variety of activities and events including the traditional group photo in front of Wilson Hall and a buffalo pasture tour. The festivities will begin with Mr. Freeze's Cryo Show, presented by Jerry Zimmerman of the Particle Physics Division. The popular show incorporates liquid nitrogen liquid nitrogen experiments to demonstrate state change in gas, liquid, and solid materials. A tour of the Fermilab Fire Department featuring a crash simulation will follow at 10 a.m.

This year, there will be a special session designed to encourage interest in science among interested high school girls, who will meet one-on-one with female scientists and engineers. Space is limited for this event and is available by sign up only.

New activities this year will include the Physics of Sports, insect studies as part of the prairie tours and the Light and Color Demo, one of the "World Year in Physics" demonstrations that Fermilab has performed for local elementary and middle schools. "It's a demonstration of how light works -- how atoms emit photons, how light sometimes acts like a wave, sometimes like a particle," said coordinator Anne Heavey. "An overhead projector and a jar of corn syrup are two crucial ingredients -- I'm not going to give any more away!"

For more information and a full schedule of events, visit the DASTOW web site.

-- Lauren Younis

2007 Summer Lecture Series puts student work in context

Leon Lederman speaks to summer students about his Nobel prize winning experiment in the series' second lecture.

Today is the fourth talk in a series of lectures aimed at orienting students with the work, research, and programs underway at Fermilab. Ralph Pasquinelli from the Accelerator Division's Engineering Department will speak at noon today on Fermilab's engineering operations.

The lectures, which take place Tuesdays at noon through August 7, are sponsored by the Summer Internships in Science and Technology program. The goal of SIST is to help students understand the role of their work in context, and to guide them as they contribute to the ongoing success of Fermilab and the international physics community.

Last week Fermilab Director Pier Oddone, the third speaker in the 11-lecture series, outlined the ongoing success of Fermilab and its role in the international physics community in his welcome address to the students. "It was so interesting," said summer intern Kristen Vaccaro, a junior from Reid College in Oregon working on the COUPP project. "It gave a good introduction to Fermilab, particularly about particle physics as a whole and as an international effort."

SIST organizer Elliot McCrory sees the lecture series as a great way to inform young people about career possibilities in science and engineering. He hopes that a personal address from the director helped the summer interns to see the impact of their research. "We want to connect the students' work to the mission of the lab," said McCrory. "This will help them understand the context of their future careers."

McCrory expressed respect for Oddone's enthusiasm and commitment, noting that he clearly enjoys working with students and emphasizing the importance of their work at the lab. Although the lectures are designed for summer students, everyone is invited to attend. A list of the summer lecture series speakers and topics are available here.

-- Lauren Younis

From Science.com, June 15, 2007

Delay in Europe Could Mean Extra Year for U.S. Collider

Physicists were hardly surprised when officials at the European lab CERN announced last week that the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will not start up in November as planned. Assembly of the $3.8 billion accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, was more than a month behind, leaving no time for a scheduled month-long "engineering run" before power becomes prohibitively expensive in the winter (Science, 6 April, p. 31).

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