Sunday, July 06, 2008
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My internship is going well. The first day consisted of unavoidable administrative stuff. I got my lbl.gov email account and the best part, the badge which gives me my lab identification and security clearance. The buckle that came with it has a nice string attached to the card which winds up. That means I can whip out my card to swipe an access point like in the movies. It also works as a great yo-yo type toy or weapon. But according to the lab people, “there is no classified research being conducted here.” Right…
The majority of the participants were white, which is a change of pace from the demographics I’m used to in school. It was pretty interesting because there were people from around the country and even a person from outside the US. I also noticed that Ivy Leaguers have a tendency to be indirect about their school to non-leaguers, as if to hide their intellectual superiority, like saying, “I go to school in Massachusetts.” All interns have to sign an intellectual property contract stating that all our work will be the property of the lab. That sucks, but it doesn’t really matter to me because I doubt I’m going to change the world as an undergraduate. It seems pretty fair, because with out the labs facilities and funding, you probably aren’t going to discover anything anyways. Then in true Cal tradition we got a Periodic Table from the lab considering the fact that most of the transuranic elements were discovered at on campus or on the lab.
The lab is pretty cool. Because it’s a lab setting, there are research posters, electronics, chemicals, gas tanks, and power sources everywhere. I think there's more liquid nitrogen here than soft drinks. At the lab you’re always exposed to some type of danger. You will see warning signs every fifty feet. Here's a list of what I've seen: radiation hazard, biological hazard, flammable, high voltage and high magnetic fields. In my lab, there’s a yellow tape which says “Caution: radiation area” on the ground. Inside would be lead canisters that hold radioisotopes. But the people there just ignore the warning and went right in to find one of the instruments that I will be using. By working in such a dangerous area, I have to be cautious. I watch out for mechanical failure, fire, explosions, electrocution, exposure to chemicals and nuclear radiation, biological attack, falling off a cliff, cougars and getting run over by a car coming through a blind spot. The staff often warns us that we have to be extra careful because the electrical outlets at the lab are much more dangerous as it draws 480 volts. So in a nutshell, what is safe back at home, can kill you here.
An interesting quirk about the place is the free roaming turkeys. It’s analogous to the peacocks near the Arboretum. They seem so out of place, yet they seem to strut like that own the place. They would attack people and there was even a story of some turkeys that broke through the window of the dining hall to get to the food. But there’s a civil side to them as well. One person who worked here said that she saw some turkeys using the crosswalk. If that were true then I guess the turkeys are better at following traffic laws than the people here. Turkeys have even reached the student dorms. Another constant sight are the goats brought in to feed on the dry brush. The lab actually keeps the goats penned in with an electric fence. I was ignorant of that fact. One day, when I saw a flock, I immediately went to investigate. As I approached the fence I felt a tingling sensation near my calf. Thinking that the ropes on the fence might be rough, I took my finger and reached over the feel the rope. When my finger was just about to reach the fence, the current arced over to my finger and gave me a shock. But luckily, it was only 12 volts, so it wasn’t powerful enough to cause me physical damage. The pain didn’t last but it really stung. It felt halfway between a static shock and a van da graff generator.
I get some extra attention due to my last name. It is the same as the lab’s director, Nobel Laureate Steve Chu. Second to lab founder Ernest Lawrence, he’s the most respected guy here in the entire lab. People immediately ask me if I’m related to him. Sometimes I joke that I am related to him so that everybody will treat me better. It’s cool that I get to walk on Chu Road on my way to work. The unofficial custom here is that if you earn a Nobel Prize, you get a parking spot and a road named after you. All the streets are named after the labs’ numerous Nobel Laureates. But seriously, this place is so important to world science and national security. Lawrence’s cyclotron arguably resulted in all the experimental physics discoveries after theoretical quantum mechanics. Lawrence’s Radiation Lab created “big science,” where teams of scientists use expensive government funded instruments to make amazing discoveries. It basically led up to the DOE national lab system. The enriched uranium and plutonium used in the atomic bombs in WWII and the carbon 14 used in Calvin’s discovery of his namesake cycle were created here. But because this is a lab with ties to the Manhattan project there’s always that security issue. There was actually a pamphlet which shows the countries that are banned from the lab: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. It was interesting that along with China, Hong Kong and Macau nationals were on the “caution” list. Even beyond the science, the lab is an interesting place. Cal always tries to advertise the mix of cultures on campus. That’s not entirely true. But at the lab there are so many languages spoken here. Everyday I hear a foreign language conversation in the cafeteria and on the buses. It’s cool that all these cultures gather in one place to do research to benefit the world.
Work is a lot better than I imagined. It isn’t boring desk job where you sit in your cubicle all day. I have to walk to various buildings to perform my experiments. The work here is more collaborative and hands on. The social atmosphere here is pretty chill. There’s no dress code, with middle aged men wearing T-shirts and jeans. One of the people in my department looks like a total hippie with a beard and he rides a motorcycle to work. I was surprised that many of the middle aged people would actually come to chat with immature undergrads. With all the environmental and sustainability research going on here, politics definitely leans left. The hours are flexible but erratic at the same time. My advisor told me to work 8 hours a day. It doesn’t matter when I start or end. The down side is that working overtime is almost a must when deadlines are approaching. My mentor tells me that "to complete a research paper requires sweat and tears. If you aren't willing to sacrifice, you can go write fiction."
The environment is quite a learning experience. I had my first office meeting. It was with some mid-career research scientists (aka big shots). I really liked how a lowly undergraduate like me was given the same respect as everyone else. It wasn’t as serious as I thought. I liken it to a high school academic team meeting; the discussion is usually sidetracked with a nerdy joke. The people seemed to be really comfortable with one another. The people there were extremely articulate and well versed in science and world politics. They went on an in depth discussion on the Darfur conflict and the political issues of China’s support of the regime to import their oil. I liked how I got to see how real scientists presented their ideas and how they cross examined each other. I saw what questions they asked and what their thought processes were.
One of the days we had a lab wide meeting. Once again, I found it pretty cool that undergraduates were in the meeting along with balding senior scientists. Apparently the lab is lax on safety and failed the latest inspections. This has consequences with the management of the University of California in jeopardy and a risk of losing funding for many research projects. And at the end came a flood of questions which made the meeting over an hour. People seemed really concerned and wanted to give their opinions. This is what it’s like with an interdisciplinary group of scientists and engineers at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division. I heard that at the Physics Division meeting ended in 30 minutes because it was so quiet.
The lab has these open summer lectures. Some of the most intelligent people would gather to hear a talk on the discoveries at the lab. The first lecture was on computer graphics and visualization. It applied to making images of proteins, and mapping oil underground. The guy had to find an all encompassing equation that accounts for all the optical effects of light and then create an algorithm to predict what an object would look like under certain conditions. The second lecture was on climate change. The presenter was a recent Nobel Laureate. She won the peace prize with Al Gore and the rest of the LBL committee. Predictably, the presentation was a lot like An Inconvenient Truth, so there were a lot of graphs with a sharp increase near the end and many predictions of the future. But I liked how there was less of that Hollywood documentary feel. Instead of a politician “quoting” other people’s work, a scientist was presenting on her own work. There weren’t the lame jokes or the appeal to people’s emotions, just cold hard facts.
One of the more exciting moments was when I went on a tour of the Advanced Light Source (ALS). It is one of the most important facilities on site, and housed in Lawrence’s original cyclotron. It emits a very bright (brighter than the sun) and coherent beam of x-rays which is used for various scientific disciplines including crystallography to find protein structure and figuring out the lattices structure of chemical compounds. Academic team members would know about my fondness for quantum physics and particle physics, so bear with me as I go on my nerdy spiel (or you can skip this paragraph). There’s a quantum mechanical effect where if an energetic electron traveling near the speed of light changes its direction, virtual photons are released tangentially. Scientists can focus, and make the beam coherent like a laser. An analogy given by one of the scientists is to picture the electron as a garbage truck and photons as flies hovering over the trash. When the truck makes a quick, sudden turn, the flies don’t have enough time to react so they fly off in a straight line. The particle accelerator works by using a CRT to emit electrons with tungsten as the cathode. Then the electrons move through a linear accelerator, which merges into the first synchrotron ring. The most energetic electrons enter the second, larger ring. Huge magnets bend the electrons to emit the photons and to focus the bright light. The light exits in over 20 locations along the ring to go to experiments. The x-ray radiation is so intense that if you manage to stick a body part in the beam, you’d get a lethal dose in a nanosecond. The other particle accelerator onsite is the Bevatron (the first synchrotron), which was decommissioned as it went over its expected lifespan. They plan to create a path for light to exit the ALS and enter the building which housed the old Bevtron. While in that building, another linear accelerator will convert the photons into a focused laser, which is powerful enough to track the movement of electrons in hybridized orbitals of molecules. That feat just blows my mind away. Other research going on in the lab is pretty exciting. One guy was looking for the Higgs Boson in conjunction with the LHC at CERN. Another undergrad is doing research on nuclear fusion reactors. For sustainable fusion to occur, you have to reach extremely high temperatures to have enough energy to get deuterium and tritium to react. There are two ways, using a high energy laser, or using an ion beam. This guy is researching the use of K+ as the ion beam. For it to be successful, he needs to find a way to use magnets to accurately focus the beam. Surprisingly, the task is not as hard as it seems. K+ is too slow and massive for relativistic and quantum mechanical effects.
As my research was starting I met my mentor, which serves as my academic advisor. He has been in numerous magazine articles and won numerous awards. My mentor is definitely one of the more eminent scientists in the lab. He’s worked on projects with DOE and homeland security. He is a part of engineers with out borders and his team won an award when he created a stove for Darfur refugees which was cheap, constructed out of available materials, easy to make, and increased heat efficiency. It created less smoke and used less wood, which means the women didn’t have to venture out of their protected UN refugee camp to gather wood. The team marketed the invention as a partial solution to the genocide because governments were unwilling to help. He also won awards for UV treatment of drinking water in India. The method uses UV light to destroy the bacteria’s DNA, making them unable to reproduce. The process is 1,000 times more efficient that merely heating the water. My relationship with my mentor is much like QB’s relationship with Sylvia. I only meet with my mentor once a week because he is really busy doing his research and overseeing post docs. I can do the project with out him, yet he acts as my “mentor” because it gives the project credibility. The only difference is that Sylvia’s role allowed me to have more power as a captain, while right now, I’m pretty much screwed because I have to produce a credible research paper with out my best resource.
The person I work more closely with is another student intern. My coworker comes from a very interesting background. He was home schooled and has an auditory learning disorder. He’s actually a biology major in a community college, so it must have been a miracle that he was picked. But he’s one of those people who have a rare combination of being articulate and nice enough to talk his way through anything. He isn’t very knowledgeable in the project, but he usually does most of the talking. He’s also got this drive and work ethic which really impresses me. He actually applied to 9 research programs and got rejected from all of them. He lost his funding from the DOE SULI program but somehow talked his way to get funded and get the job. It’s amazing that his people skills were so strong that it overcame his disadvantaged background. It really impresses me that this guy really appreciates this once in a lifetime chance.
But I still have a problem with the project itself. Cooling data centers is in pretty high demand now but it’s just so boring. My advisor sent me a bunch of research papers to look over. Honestly, it was one of the most boring science articles I ever read. One paper was just about the properties dust. Another was on air, more specifically how to use air to cool data centers. That’s some pretty low tech solutions for a high tech lab.
The first week consisted of me reading science journals and manuals for the instruments I will be using. I had a lot of vocab and equations to wiki. Out of that boredom, I found this graph pretty interesting. This graph shows how absent minded scientists can be. Instead of saying, “don’t put insects into the instrument,” which is pretty common sense, it gives a graphical interpretation.
The second week was testing the instruments which was a pain because none of us knew how to program LabView. Communication was bad. It took us the whole week with all of us working overtime everyday to get the data acquisition program to outputting data that makes sense. The third week consisted of me doing hands on work with the hardware. Surprisingly, being a scientist isn’t all about evaluating huge differential equations on a chalkboard or sitting in front of the computer all day. I was a plumber for a week, using my trusty adjustable wrench to connect copper pipes and brass nuts. Then some days I'd do a bunch of electrical wiring. Sometimes, I'd borrow the lab's truck to haul equipment to another building. The plan for the next few weeks is to finish the setup and to truck the equipment to the test site at Santa Clara. I think the hardest part about being a scientist is that most of the time you have no idea how to do something, but you have no choice but to figure it out yourself, or find help.
