# Presentation: 142957

## A brief tour of particle physics...and how you might get there from here

- Jim Kerby
- (Adams 1980)

## Why?

- What is Particle Physics?
- Why should anyone care?
- What do I do?
- How did I get here?
- What can you do?

## Why?

- But, people have been asking this question throughout history, and sometimes the answers they come up with help us gain a greater insight into the world and universe around us.
- And that matters!

- This is the question continuously asked by particle physicists, and by little kids.
-  Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.

## The Ancient Greeks...

- ...wondered about the world around them, and came up with a theory that there were four ‘elements’---Air, Fire, Earth, and Water.
- They were looking for the ‘indivisible’ things that made up everything they could see.
- We’re still trying to do that today.

- right after I chuck this
- thing maybe I’ll try to
- figure out what it’s
- made of...

- The word ‘atom’ is from the Greek “atomos,” meaning indivisible.

## But there’s more!

- Over the next millenia, people slowly began to learn more about the world, the universe, and themselves.
- And in the 16th century, chemists started to recognize and group ‘elements’.
- And in the late 19th century, exploration of the ‘atom’ really took off.

- Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898-1902 discovered 2 new radioactive elements.
- Marie won the Nobel Prize in 1903 (physics), and again in 1911 (chemistry).
- Her daughter won it in 1935 (also chemistry).
- Marie died of anemia, brought on by radiation exposure

- People had begun to recognize that the basic structure of matter must be more complex than they understood.

## So how can we study this?

- In the early 1900’s, means to explore the realm that couldn’t be seen were being developed.

- E.O. Lawrence developed the first cyclotron, which he used to accelerate nuclear particles.
- He won the Nobel Prize in 1939 in physics.
- And the basic direction for particle physics tools for the rest of this century was set.

- now how do
- we get the hydrogen
- to make another
- turn?

## And how do we study it now?

- Many universities built accelerators in the following decades to conduct research.
- Eventually they start to collaborate, as the facilities grew in size and complexity.
- In 1968, Fermilab is started, 40 miles west of Chicago.  For the past 30 years, it has been one of the two highest energy accelerators in the world.

- 1 mile

- 16 story building

- 50,000+ laps per second!
- ...both directions

- my office

## What Physicists Know

- ...or currently believe.  Our understanding evolves with new theories and new experiments.
- Everything is made up of these bits:

- The Standard Model

- protons and neutrons are made of ‘up’ and ‘down’ quarks

- the electron is here

- Fermilab discovered the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ quarks

- “stuff”

- how the “stuff” talks

## An Experiment?

- Just how do we measure a quark???
- We start by making a calorimeter.
- Many moons ago in Mr. Goodman’s chemistry class we used to do calorimetry experiments.  I remember them something like this:

- thermometer
- to measure the
- temperature rise
- of the water

- outer can filled
- with water

- burn the peanut in here

- By measuring the temperature rise of a known mass of water, you can measure the amount of energy released from the peanut.  Sometimes the experiment even worked.
- In particle physics, we know the energy of the particles going around the accelerator, so we just need a calorimeter to measure what comes out of a collision...

## An Experiment!

- Our calorimeter is a little more complex.

- It’s 3 stories tall, weighs 5000 tons, measures particle energy and direction, and takes another measurement of another collision every millionth of a second or so.
- And there are other parts I haven’t included!

## And a Result!

- The diagram shows the amount of energy and the distribution of the energy in the detector after a collision.
- By summing the energy, and looking at the distribution, Physicists can work backwards and determine where it came from.

## Result pt II

- This is an artists rendition of the same sort of event, cleaned up to make it a bit more understandable...

## Yeah great.  Why should I care?

- If the fundamentals are known, applications follow.  Some clever person takes the knowledge and makes something...maybe makes money, too.
- An example might help:

- Mont St. Michel, interior.  13th c.

- At some point (after a good number of churches undoubtedly fell down), builders figured out the basic properties of single blocks of stone.
- This let them design cathedrals based on knowledge rather than trial and error.
- If you visit a cathedral today, you’re happy they figured this out.

## So understanding sub-atomic particles helps how?

- It takes a while for the right person to come along, but when that happens you can see the results.
- About 100 years ago the electron was discovered.  You now probably have an electron accelerator in your house...it’s called a television.

- About 70 years ago quantum mechanics was being formulated.  Transistors follow.
- And the first devices from the next level down are now being produced... (but not in your home...yet).
- What are we going to get from knowing what a quark is?  I don’t know.  But I’m looking forward to it.

## What do I do?

- Short version--I build things.  There is lots of technology needed to make an accelerator and a detector work, and I try to make sure that they do.

- My first job at Fermilab involved the operation of the Central Helium Liquefier.  Many of the magnets in the Fermilab accelerator are superconducting. They operate in liquid helium.

- The CHL is like the refrigerator in your kitchen, except it produces liquid helium at -270 deg C.
- It’s also a little larger than your refrigerator.

- CHL Compressors and Cold Box

## That was cool, but...

- I decided to try my hand at designing superconducting magnets, and particle detectors.  In the last decade, I’ve done both.

- CDF End Plug Calorimeter...about 25,000 optical channels per end!

- On CDF I was responsible for the design and integration of the upgraded “End Plugs,” which will come into operation next year.  They are “small” on the CDF scale...only 120 tons each.  But the force exerted on the plug when the central magnet is turned on is about 4 times greater than gravity.
- I continue to be happy and relieved that the whole thing seems to work.

## ...and now...

- This is the first time the US has collaborated in such a way with CERN.  Many other countries are, too.  Just as universities found individual accelerators too expensive, now nations are finding the same thing.

- I am back to building superconducting magnets.  The United States has an agreement with CERN, a particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, to help construct the accelerator and detectors for the LHC, or Large Hadron Collider.

- I work on the accelerator.  Mr. Wiand is working on one of the detectors.

- ~5.4 miles

## The LHC Magnets

- Fermilab is providing the final focus quadrupole magnets to LHC.  These magnets are placed next to the detectors, and determine the ‘rate’ at which the experiments collect data.  They are at the edge of what is possible, and are among the most challenging magnets ever produced.
- One of these magnets, completed, costs about $500,000 to make.  We try very hard not to make mistakes.

- Gradient = 215 T/m
- Peak Field ~9T
- Bore -- 70 mm
- field quality to better than 1 part in 10,000
- (beam makes 11,000 rev/sec, or 6.7B rev in a 1 week store)

## The LHC Magnets

- Measuring a model...to within 0.0005”

- A completed “model” magnet

## How did I get here?

- I “graced” these hallowed halls from 1976 to 1980.
- I don’t think there is any direct imprint left from my time here.

- I took 3 years of chemistry.  Spent the last year working with computers...a Commodore 64 (oooh!)
- I helped start the Soccer “Club”.  We did OK--co-ed, too.  It later became varsity, and went on to bigger and better things.
- I took a year of physics.  Did one whole exam using the ‘left hand’ rule.
- After a year or two, I decided to drop Latin and ended up in woods.  Had a ball.
- I was regularly terrified in speech class.
- I was a lousy wrestler for one year.  I was a much better manager for the next couple of years.

## Then what?

- By mutual agreement I was allowed to graduate.
- For reference, I just made the top 10% of the graduating class.

- I had some inkling about wanting to be an engineer.
- I went to Purdue, which has an extremely well respected engineering school, and a basketball team of one gender that just never quite makes it over the hump.  The other gender has done quite well lately, thank you.
- My folks were also happy with the choice as I was leaving town, and in-state tuition is a bargain.

## ...college...

- I entered freshman engineering, along with several thousand of my closest friends.

- By the time freshman physics was over, electrical engineering and physics were eliminated.  Civil and chemical engineering I had no interest in from the start.  Nuclear didn’t appeal either.  I chose mechanical engineering.
- Some time in the middle of my sophomore year it occurred to me they were serious and I had better get to work.
- I did pretty well, typically poorest in the classes I had the least interest in.
- As I had tested out of some chemistry and calculus courses, I had a few extra hours available for electives.  Among other things, I took a course in haiku.  I was really bad at it, and I’m glad the art form survived me.

## You want me to leave?

- During senior year, I started interviewing, just like the few thousand of my closest friends still around.
- I interviewed alot.  Unfortunately, I had a couple of problems:  unlike many ME’s, I do not *love* cars.  So Detroit wasn’t interesting.
- Also, being the mid-1980’s, the US was spending a lot of time fighting the “evil empire.”   This meant there were a lot of defense industry related jobs.  BUT...I had no interest in making things that went “Boom!”.  Still don’t.

- The jobs didn’t interest me that much.
- So I did the next best thing.  I went to grad school.

## Rugby!...oh, Grad School

- I stuck around to work on “The Immersion Cooling of Electronic Circuitry,” research at Purdue sponsored by IBM.  This work was a theoretical and experimental evaluation of the possibility of cooling high density electronic circuits by dunking them in various fluids.  It was moderately complex.
- It was a complete dead end as far as IBM was concerned, and their stock started diving just after I completed my research.

- I played an awful lot of rugby for Purdue at the time as well.  I probably could have graduated faster without this diversion.

- I was
-  there

## You want me to leave? (again)

- I was pretty tired of school at this point.  So I started interviewing again.
- I interviewed seriously at two places.  I interviewed a bunch of other places, too.

- Through contacts, I interviewed with Westvaco, who (at the time) made paper products.  Like those used in milk cartons.  They make miles of the stuff.  In the mountains of Virginia.

- After glancing at an article in Scientific American, I sent my resume to Fermilab.  It just seemed like a cool place.  I had very little idea what they did.
- Among other people, I interviewed with this man, Leon Lederman.  I had no idea who he was.  He was wearing a tee shirt and running shorts at the time.

- Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman

## You want me to stay?

- Fermilab offered me a job, on a 1 year contract.  I’ve been here 14 years now.  I suspect I was a terrible interview.
- My first job was supposedly in cryogenics, which I had no detailed background in.  Instead, I dove right in to do controls programming, which I no background in.
- I took artistic drawing courses, and proved I am really bad at it.
- I went to CERN for a year in 1991, getting some practice in using the French that my grandmother always tried to get me to learn and that I took 3 years of while at Adams.
- I have switched around among 3 or 4 jobs at Fermilab, none of which was or is directly related to my studies.
- I volunteered for the adminstration commission at our church.  I resigned a few years later.
- I took pottery courses, discovering I’m pretty good at the functional stuff.  We use dinner plates I made.  We threw out most of the early stuff that weighed a ton.
- I spend time with my family.  You’ve already seen my kidlets.

## What can you do?

- _Whatever you set your mind to.  _
- You may be wrong.  Try anyway.

- It doesn’t need to be particle physics or mechanical engineering. _But_--try to do something you like.  Life is definitely not always happy, but this is a goal worth striving for.
- It will take concentrated effort to achieve.  There are lots of people who are willing to help you.  Some will do it in a way you don’t necessarily like.
- Education is good.  The more the merrier.  Keep at it--your options increase.  It helps you control what you can.
- Even if you’re not ‘supposed’ to take a class, if you want to, do it.  It’s more important to discover something about yourself than to preserve a GPA.
- It may not be a direct path.  You may need to discover things you don’t do well first.
- It may change.  You may live about 4 times as long as you have already lived.  Don’t expect the path will be straight and narrow.

## The pep talk Part II.

- My class has been out from Adams 20 years now.  I’m getting old!
- My classmates, I’m sure, are in all walks of life.  I’m sure that some are more successful, if measured in money, than I.  I hope they are all as happy, but I doubt it.
- I expect that some of you in this room will leave this place and do great things, in the field of your choice.  You can.  Remember the elbow grease.
- If you haven’t already, take advantage of the teachers already around you.  These are people who have chosen to make a living helping you. Use them.
- Educate yourself as much as is possible or you can stand.  You get better toys.
- Wherever you end up, continue to learn from those around you.
- Travel.  Anywhere.

## GOOD LUCK!

- And, in case you really do have an interest in particle physics, there are a couple of places to visit:
- Fermilab is open to the public, between the hours of 8AM and 5PM.  You can come for a free tour.
- A couple of web sites, which no doubt you’re more proficient at surfing on than I am...
- http://www.fnal.gov
- http://www.fnal.gov/pub/hep_descript.html
- http://www.fnal.gov/pub/tour.html
- http://ParticleAdventure.org/
- http://www.cpepweb.org/
- And for a little history...
- http://versaware.kidsreference.lycos.com/
- then Topics/Science,Math&Technology/Physical Sciences/Physics
- or just do a search...