South Dakota students meet Fermilab science

Students from South Dakota traveled to Fermilab earlier this month to learn about the laboratory.

Since late 2007, when the Homestake mine became the favored site for the proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, Fermilab scientists have had an eye on South Dakota. Earlier this month, a group of South Dakotan students took a look at Fermilab.

The 10 students, all science-focused high school seniors or rising college freshman, traveled to Fermilab for four days of tours, talks with scientists and self-designed studies of cosmic rays.

"The idea is to excite them about physics and science in general," said Fermilab Deputy Director Young-Kee Kim, who hopes the program will expand to a 10-week internship in future summers.

The plan for the students' trip was born when Kim and Fermilab Director Pier Oddone visited the Homestake site in Lead, South Dakota in March. There, Kim heard South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds speak about the facility's potential to inspire future scientists.

"We were discussing education, and it seemed so natural to invite students from South Dakota to see the research we're doing at Fermilab," Kim explained. "I thought of the bison in their state and it occurred to me that we have bison and prairie too. I think it's important to make these kinds of human connections."

Last week's visitors had applied for a program that lets South Dakota students visit underground laboratories around the world, including CERN and Italy's Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso.

"Not many kids get to go to a major research lab," said Karlie Haug, who graduated this year from a high school not far from Lead. "It's been really interesting being at Fermilab, seeing actual science and doing open-ended activities like the cosmic ray project."

Matthew Kirkegaard, also a 2009 high school graduate, said seeing the antiproton source was "definitely the coolest part of the trip."

Before visiting Fermilab, he knew he wanted to study mathematics in college. After four days at Fermilab, he added, "and maybe theoretical physics too."

-- Rachel Carr

TD Test and Instrumentation Department picnic

Members of the Technical Division's Test and Instrumentation Department enjoy a picnic on Friday, July 24.

Pavement grinding begins today on west Wilson Street

Work on west Wilson Street from the Wilson gate area to B Road began this morning. Crews will grind 2 inches off of the pavement surface. They will then replace the missing material with new, hot asphalt material later in the week, weather permitting.

To do the road work, Wilson Street in that area will have one lane of traffic, with a flagman directing cars. There may be some traffic delays. Car drivers are encouraged to use Pine Street as an alternate entrance to avoid the construction. Truck traffic should continue to enter on Wilson Street, but will experience slight delays.

The race for the secret of the universe

From Parade, July 26, 2009

Last September at Fermilab-the legendary physics research facility just outside Chicago­-several of the nation's top scientists gathered at 1:30 a.m. to hold a somewhat bittersweet all-nighter. They wanted to be together when they, and America, fell behind in what many consider the most important and resonant competition in science: the search for the elusive Higgs boson, also known as "the God particle."

Physicists believe that this special subatomic particle allows all of the other particles in the universe to have mass and come together to form, well, basically everything that's around us. Without so-called God particles, one Fermilab theorist tells me, "atoms would have no integrity, so there would be no chemical bonding, no stable structures—no liquids or solids—and, of course, no physicists and no reporters."

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