Argonne National Labs

How can I explain the awesomeness that was today?! First. We rode in school buses. Second. We toured Argonne National Laboratory. (Side note: that guy on the home page with the "Valley of Death" title was one of our tour guides.)

Argonne started us out at the Advanced Photon Source which accelerates electrons to nearly the speed of light and then shoots them around a loop (a giant loop) letting various researchers pull off these crazy X-rays (and other radiation) for experiments- experiments like taking "pictures" of molecules, tracking copper in the human brain, and analyzing nano-materials. In the 2011 fiscal year, Argonne had more than 5000 users of the APS who conducted 4,400 experiments and produced 1300 peer-reviewed publications. In this photo, SISE participants overlook one of the experimental bays inside the APS. Pretty impressive- and this is only the tip of the Argonne iceberg.

We were next escorted to the "Advanced Powertrain Research Facility" and saw some electric vehicles and the laboratory used for testing the emissions of new vehicles (imaging a treadmill and breathing machine for a car or truck...) After a fancy lunch in Argonne's 157 bed guest house (to house visiting researchers), we headed over to the nuclear building and saw some old Fermi relics. As our guide said, "Argonne is the belly button of nuclear energy today." We were also escorted through the new materials testing laboratory (by the guy mentioned above) where Argonne researchers attempt to "scale up" lab experiments to a marketable scale. For example, new materials used for batteries might work well at your desk in the University, but will it be practical in the undercarriage of half the cars in America? The materials lab will work it out (they do, afterall, have floor to ceiling, walk-in fume hoods!)

Today really made me want to go back to "pure sciences" or maybe just physics. There are so many fun toys and cool problems to work out! So speaking of, though we were tired, many of us stayed up until 1am (or 3am in Karl's case) working on our projects as this was one of the last days to prepare for our 45 second pitch on Thursday and 20 minute final on Friday. It's amazing what the human body can pull off with so little resources (meaning, time and sleep).