Fermilab life of LabFest

Fermilab neutrino physicist Dave Schmitz and DZero physicist Mike Cooke demonstrate physics principles to attendees at Chicago's LabFest on Friday, Aug. 21.

When Fermilab scientists used liquid nitrogen to shoot a ball skyward through man-made fog, the crowd parted. Some gasped in their lawn seats while covering their ears. Older elementary school-aged boys broke into a run across Millennium Park in search of the flying trophy.

Everyone was paying attention.

The cryogenic show was only one of several activities Fermilab volunteers, docents and Education Office staffers brought to the Chicago landmark park last month to celebrate the grand finale of LabFest, a series of 14 outdoor, summer science fairs. Each LabFest drew between 450 and 2,000 spectators, except for the Millennium Park event that attracted 8,000 science lovers.

Fermilab volunteers made physics fun and accessible at all of the outings. ABC's "Live Green" TV segment captured the festive spirit at the LabFest at Oscar DePriest Elementary School in Chicago.

"It is wonderful when kids ask questions," said Penelope Constanta of Fermilab's Computing Division. "I love Fermilab, so I am happy to tell people about it. I think if you love science, you have a responsibility to propagate that in the next generation."

At the various LabFests, children and parents tried simple experiments and watched demonstrations arranged by Fermilab volunteers in order to learn about the physics concepts of light and color, electricity, force and motion and magnetism. Physicist Dave Schmitz volunteered at the final fest, and you can read his first-hand account on his blog at Quantum Diaries.

The LabFests were just some of the events Fermilab participated in as part of Science Chicago, a collaborative year-long celebration of scientific discovery through free hands-on activities, demonstrations and take-home activities at parks, libraries and festivals across the Chicagoland area as well as lectures and open houses.

-- Tona Kunz

Fermilab physicist Dave Schmitz demonstrates physics principles to a young LabFest attendee.

Giant puff ball fungus from Fermilab's forest

Roads and Grounds intern Julie Allen (pictured) found this giant puff ball, a species of fungus, in the wooded area behind the Fermilab Fire Department.

Tevatron tightens up the race for the Higgs

From New Scientist, Aug. 31, 2009

With the Large Hadron Collider still in the repair shop, the race to find the Higgs boson has become a lot tighter, thanks to the older and less powerful - but working - Tevatron collider near Chicago.

"The Tevatron definitely has a chance," says Greg Landsberg of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who works on one of the LHC's detectors.

With the LHC due to restart only in November at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, the Tevatron has been gaining ground in the search for the Higgs, the particle thought to give mass to other elementary particles. At last week's Lepton Photon conference in Hamburg, Germany, Tevatron physicists said that by early 2011 they will have recorded enough data to allow them to either find or rule out the Higgs as predicted by the standard model.

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Turkey plans an accelerator center

Over the last ten years, Turkish physicists have been working diligently to build a national accelerator center, which would serve as a core science facility and offer increased opportunities for Turkish students. It would be the first accelerator facility in the country, and only the second in the Middle East.

After much planning, excitement is building over the construction of the first phase of the project, a testing and research facility called the Turkish Accelerator and Radiation Laboratory at Ankara, or TARLA for short. Scheduled to be completed in 2012, it will be an Infrared Free Electron Laser, capable of producing an intense laser beam of infrared light for research in a wide variety of sciences ranging from physics to chemistry to biology and medicine.

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