Move over Quantum Diarists--here they come!
Marcello Pavan got a taste of humble pie this week when he served as a judge for the Canada-Wide Science Fair, which featured some pretty amazing projects. "It is then that I wonder 'What the heck was I doing in high school,' and 'How on earth did I ever manage to get a PhD in nuclear physics?'" Marcello writes, "because, man, these kids are good, and I, well, was more concerned with soccer, parties, and the like..."
Debbie Harris spoke at the University of Rochester's Particle Day, where she got some fun questions ("Did you break anything when you first sent those 10 pulses down the beamline trying to hit the bull's-eye a mile away to within an inch?") and heard about the projects that the kids did in their classrooms. "You could just tell they were proud of their work and had fun making these measurements. They also made posters of their work: I saw more technical detail and knowledge of particle physics in these posters than I dared put into my talk in the first place!" she writes.
A California AP Physics class sent questions about string theory to the Quantum Diarists -- and a Fermilab colleague took up the challenge. The intriguing questions from the class include: Since the strings vibrate, do they have specific definable frequencies? What technology, if any, is in development to test string theory? If our universe is constantly expanding, won't changes in the ripples and curves of the space-time fabric cause our gravity to change or fluctuate as well?
Finally, some Quantum Diarists are still in school themselves. Claire Gray is attending Jefferson Lab's summer school for graduate students, and she shares
what she's learning with her readers. First lesson: photomultipliers.
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