SyPhy -- Syphers on Physics

Lucky 13

2012-01-30T20:35:00.001-06:00

Wow, I hadn't realized that it had been a whole year since I posted anything to this site...

So, another U.S. Particle Accelerator School session comes to an end. This time, I was fortunate enough to teach at the winter session in Austin, Texas -- one of my favorite towns. Our course in the Fundamentals of Particle Accelerators had students from across the globe participating to learn about the basics of accelerator physics and (some) technology. I think we all had a lot of fun, both learning and teaching. (Both for me, at least!) UT is a great host, and the city has so much to offer in terms of food, music, and personality!

Here's a group photo of our class:

Coming back to the land of the SSC brought back many memories, and provided some interesting class discussions.

Still have the lead, with 13 courses overall taught at the USPAS. But, I'm told there are a couple of people trying to catch me. Guess I'll have to sign up again soon...

-Mike

Good-Bye, AAP

2011-01-20T23:27:00.001-06:00

Great Discussion, Everyone! - Nov 09 2:11PM

Hi Everyone at [...], [...], and [...]:

It was great talking to all of you these past three weeks. Thanks for all the excellent questions and discussions. Good luck with the rest of your school year, and future endeavors.

Best Regards,

-Mike

Alternative Fuels

2011-01-06T13:00:00.002-06:00

Alternative fuels - Nov 01 9:50PM

Dr. Syhpers,

My name is Brendan. I have been into cars for as long as i can remember and I especially enjoy working on them. With the future of hydrogen fuel cells, do you think they will still make working on cars as enjoyable as before? I just have to assume they will be more complex to tinker with, but do you think the avid mechanic would still be able to take part in repairing them?

Thanks,

Brendan

Re: Alternative fuels - Nov 02 12:27AM

Hi Brendan,

I can only guess, of course, but I suspect that anything that moves at high speed and weighs a ton or so will always have things that can be worked on. Though the engines (motors, actually?) of electric cars and hydrogen fueled cars might be very different than standard gasoline powered vehicles, the new cars will still go at top speeds and have lots of interesting moving parts -- should still be a lot of fun, I would think!

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Alternative fuels - Nov 02 7:35AM

Thank you for replying to my last post. Have you done any extensive research on any of the alternative fuels? Any great finds and experiences you would like to share?

Thank you for your time,

Brendan

Re: Re: Re: Alternative fuels - Nov 02 8:09PM

Hi Brendan,

I haven't done any research on fuels for automobiles. I have, however, been interested in the possibility of a new type of nuclear reactor, using a particle accelerator. People are studying how to use an accelerator to make nuclear fuel "on demand" by bombarding Thorium, for instance, with a proton beam which can turn it into nuclear fuel. People often worry about having a dangerous condition where a pile of Uranium fuel, say, gets out of control in a nuclear reactor and starts to melt down. However, if a problem develops with the Thorium system, you just turn off the accelerator and everything stops and the fuel is no longer even generated. It also has much, much less radioactive waste to deal with, plus Thorium is much more abundant on earth and easier to obtain than is Uranium. The major problem we face right now is how to make the very expensive particle accelerator(s) to run the power plant. If we can develop a system that is economical enough, it should be able to pay for itself in a reasonable time and thus be of interest to the power industry. Who knows, someday…

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Alternative fuels - Nov 04 10:50AM

That sounds very interesting. Who will run these reactor's? What kind of qualifications would one need to be successful in this industry? It sounds like a very viable way to alternatively produce energy, but it still sounds very dangerous when talking about particle accelerators.

Thanks,

Brendan

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Alternative fuels - Nov 04 4:03PM

Hi Brendan,

It's not totally known yet exactly what combination of personnel would be required, but it will be a combination of physicists (nuclear, accelerator) and engineers (nuclear, mechanical, electrical, civil) plus a whole lot of support people of all types. It's still very much in the early stages of development.

-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Alternative fuels - Nov 07 8:15PM

Dr. Syphers,

Thank you for replying. I actually considered majoring in mechanical engineering for this fall, not knowing this could have been an occupational possibility in the near future. I will yet again re-evaluate this. Thank you for taking all of the time to explain this to me.

-Brendan

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Alternative fuels - Nov 08 12:16AM

Thanks, Brendan. I hope you continue to enjoy your physics course and good luck with everything.

All the best,
-Mike

++++++++++++++

Dr. Syphers,

Thank you so much for answering all of my questions and being so helpful. I truely have learned a great deal.

Best Regards,

Brendan

Specification

2011-01-02T12:52:00.001-06:00

specification - Oct 29 12:06PM

How are Superconducting Super Collider and the Large Hadron Collider similar, different and what specifically do they do?

Re: specification - Nov 01 12:21AM

Hi,

The SSC and LHC were/are both very large accelerators that are designed to give beams of protons lots of energy and then smash them head-on into each other. The energy from the collisions creates new particles that were likely only formed during the Big Bang of the creation of the universe. So, we use these machines to try to understand just what are the fundamental forces of nature, the fundamental particles of which everything is made, and how it all works together.

The LHC accelerates particles through a total of about 7 Trillion Volts of electrical potential (you'll probably talk about electricity and magnetism later this year in physics class). The SSC was going to be bigger than the LHC -- up to 20 Trillion Volts -- but the project was canceled in order to balance the U.S. budget, back in 1993.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: specification - Nov 05 11:16AM

Out of curiosity, how much would the LHC have put the US over the budget? Also, if you could go back and redo an event that got you to where you are today, would you?

Thanks
-Phil

Re: Re: Re: specification - Nov 07 4:31PM

Well, the US's SSC project, as it was called, was to cost about $8 Billion and was to take about 10 years to complete. The U.S. budget is debated every year in Congress, so project funding always has the possibility of going away in favor of other projects. That's what happened with the SSC. It was decided to spend the money on the International Space Station instead, where it was assumed that the U.S. couldn't afford to do both in 1994. By the time it was canceled, the SSC had already spent $2 Billion out of the 8.

I must say that it's different in Europe. There, the various countries have an agreement to build projects like the LHC, and they commit to do it for the next 5 years or so and then review progress. Thus, though there were often debates in Europe and it was never totally certain until the end, it was a bit easier to get a large project started and funded to completion over there.

As for regrets and redo's, I don't think I'd change anything. We've always got choices to make, typically while we don't have all the facts in front of us. We often see things differently years later with hindsight, but I don't think any decisions "on the spot" would be much different for me.

Cheers,
-Mike

Never Work a Day...

2010-12-30T14:04:00.000-06:00

Dr. Sypher, - Oct 22 2:31PM

Hello, my name is Allyson. I am currently a junior at [...] highschool. Personally, I don't know too much about physics, but I love music. I plan on going to college for music education. Do you enjoy physics?

Re: Dr. Sypher, - Oct 25 12:31AM

Hi Allyson,

I do enjoy physics, a great deal. I think it's important to explore all kinds of subjects and find something that you really, really enjoy. Sounds like music might be that for you. A wise person once told me that if I do what I enjoy, then I'll never have to "work" a day in my life. Would you agree?

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Dr. Sypher, - Nov 05 2:14PM

Dr. Syphers,

I do agree with that completely. I find it absolutely fascinating that people can find something that they are so extremely passionate about. How exactly did you become interested in physics?

-Allyson

Re: Re: Re: Dr. Sypher, - Nov 07 4:32PM

Hi Allyson,
I became interested in astronomy at a very young age (6 or 8?) and was always looking up at the stars and moon and planets at night. When I got to High School and had already taken biology and chemistry (and math), I was told I should take "physics" next. I didn't know what that was, but when I saw a physics book and saw the chapter on "Gravity and Planetary Motion" then I knew it was the subject I had always wanted to take. And, I guess I never stopped!

-Mike

Meeting Requirements

2010-12-29T22:48:00.000-06:00

Introduction - Oct 22 9:37AM

Dr. Syphers,

My name is Laurabelle and I am currently a Junior at [...] High School. Thanks for being our adopted physicist! My favorite subject in school is math. I play on the varsity volleyball team and plan on playing in college. I want to major in physical therapy with a minor in photography.

What's the hardest or most diffiicult part of your job?

Re: Introduction - Oct 25 12:30AM

Hi Laurabelle,

I suppose the hardest part is when you get stuck trying to solve a problem and can't seem to get anywhere. It does happen -- more often than I'd like. (We don't have an "answer book" or a teacher that already has all the answers! Argghhhh!) But then, of course, that's what makes it an exciting job experience.

What kind of photography do you like to do? I dabble in that a little bit, too…

-Mike

Re: Re: Introduction - Oct 28 7:04AM

I like taking macro photos because it allows me to accentuate little details in my subjects. I'm also getting more into landscapes and portrait photography.

What kind of photography are you into and what do you do if you have trouble solving a problem- do you leave it be and come back to it or go on to something else all together?

Thanks!

Laurabelle

Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 01 12:18AM

Hi Laurabelle,

I like to take landscapes, too, as well as architectural photos.

As for problem solving, yes I often let it go for a while and come back to it. Unfortunately, I typically do not have the option of going on to something else altogether (especially if my "boss" wants an answer tomorrow!) ;-)

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 05 11:55AM

Although problem solving is the hardest part of your job, is it your least favorite or is there another aspect that you don't favor as much? And if so, what and why?

Thanks,

Laurabelle :D

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 07 4:31PM

Hi Laurabelle,

I want to point out that even though it may be hard, solving problems is probably the "best" part of the job. It's what makes it all challenging and exciting.

So, that said, I guess I don't like going to (certain) meetings and sitting there while I could be doing something more useful. There seems to be more and more meetings of this type as one gets older and more into the management side of things.

But, overall, I still enjoy almost all aspects of my work and think it is still very satisfying.

-Mike

Workin Hard

2010-12-21T12:45:00.000-06:00

: ) - Oct 21 7:54PM

Heyy Dr. Syphers

My name is Hailey, thank you very much for taking the time to be our physicist! I am a Junior at [...] High School, I am taking physics honestly to get one last science credit but i really like it so far. I would like to go to college for Speech Therapy, Audiology, and Pathology. I am a 6'1" basketball player and I play nationally, I hope to play in college at the division II level.

Whats your favorite thing about your job? Have you always wanted to be a physicist?

Re: : ) - Oct 25 12:30AM

Hi Hailey,

I think the most favorite thing about my job is the huge diversity of what all I get to do. I get to work on very sophisticated equipment with a team of very smart and fun people, get to travel and write and give talks, and get to work with the best young people who all seem to have lots of energy and lots of ambitions. I get to study science, which I have always enjoyed, and people pay me for it! Not bad!

As for your other question, I think I wanted to be a "scientist" since I was about 8 years old or so; it took me a while (10 years?) before I understood what "physics" was and that that was the "science" I was interested in.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: : ) - Oct 29 11:28AM

Heyy Dr. Syphers,

We just finished our forces unit in physics and now were learning about Energy.
Your job sounds like a lot of fun! How long is a typical work day for you? what is the most challengeing thing you've ever done with physic?

-Hailey

Re: Re: Re: : ) - Nov 01 12:19AM

Hi Hailey,

My work day varies, but it's usually at least 8 hours, and sometimes 10-12. But, I try to make the total work week about 40-50 hours at max. It really depends upon what is going on at the moment. It's important to take breaks, though, and re-set your mind and your energy level. And, as you might expect, I put in a LOT more hours when I was just a bit older than you; these days, I get tired a lot easier… ;-)

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: : ) - Nov 05 11:11AM

haha understandable a lil R&R never hurts. What do you think is the most challengeing aspect of your job? how many years did it take in college to get where you are today?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : ) - Nov 07 4:30PM

Hi Hailey,

I think the most challenging part of the job is trying to keep up with everything that is going on in the field. Things develop so rapidly. There's always new reports to read, new talks to hear, new events taking place, that it's hard to keep up sometimes. I wish I had about 56 hours in a day…

I went to school in stages. First, the typical 4-year college; then I worked for a couple of years before starting my Master's degree, which took about 3 years. Then, I took a year off before starting my PhD program, which took me another 2 years or so. So, I guess it was about 10 years of college, which I completed by the time I was 29.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : ) - Nov 09 11:43AM

Dr. Syphers,

Thank you so much for the time you took out of your busy schedule to answer question my classmates and I had!

-hailey

Elemental Creationism

2010-11-23T12:43:00.003-06:00

Introduction - Oct 21 4:42PM

Dr. Syphers,

Hello. My Name is Josh, and I am a Junior at [...] High School. I'm currently taking physics to better prepare me for my hoped major in college. I plan to major in Atmospheric Science, and minor in Music and Theater. I find this an interesting pairing, as do most others. I am musically and theaterically inclined. I enjoy the sciences and maths, but not English.

Whats it like working with a Partical Accelerator? It sounds quite interesting.

Re: Introduction - Oct 25 12:29AM

Hi Josh,

I think it's great that you have a very diverse set of interests. You'll find that whatever you do in life you can draw from all of them. Keep it up!

Working on particle accelerators is really a lot of fun for me. I get to work on state-of-the-art equipment, tour the world, write papers (and books sometimes) and give talks, work with some of the best people on the planet -- including lots of students and younger scientists. I think it's a job that's hard to beat.

What are you guys studying in physics right now?

-Mike

Re: Re: Introduction - Oct 29 1:32PM

We have just transitioned from forces to energy, definately the easiest of the units we have covered so far. I rather enjoy the class, and all the labs that we do in it. I guess I should with my career choice.

It would seem that your job entails alot of chemistry as of physics. This is interesting, especially when it comes to creating new elements. How do the accelerators distribute the energy created from the collision of the heavy elements? Do you use both fission and fusion when you combind the atoms? I would say fusion, but I guess that both are plausible. Fission would result in two smaller elements than what you would want, so I guess I answered my own question. Anyway thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

~Josh

Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 01 12:22AM

Hi Josh,

Some might say that Chemistry is just a sub-set of Physics; in fact you can take courses in "Physical Chemistry" in college. So, yes, there is a lot of overlap. But, when we create new elements with the accelerators, we just get one or a few atoms at a time; not enough to stock up a chemistry lab, I guess…

And thanks for answering your question for me. ;-)

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 01 6:04PM

I would not have guessed that you only gain a few atoms at a time. I would have guessed from the size of the machine you get a good number of them. Have you actually created a new element yet? Now what are Rare Isotope Beams? I remember what an Isotope is, from my chemistry class last semester, but would the beams be of energy from the Isotope? It sounds rather interesting.

~Josh

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 02 12:26AM

Hi Josh,

I may have over stated that fact. Indeed, many of the experiments here actually do detect individual particles, one at a time, which is what I meant by my statement. But, "a time" could be a very small fraction of a second, and thus there can be many -- sometimes thousands or more -- every second. So, it's all kind of relative.

What we do at our facility here is take atoms -- either from a gas, or by heating up a solid until it emits atoms that can be captured -- and then we strip away some of the electrons by applying a high voltage to the gas. That yields an atom which has more positive charges than negative -- an ion. Since it has a net charge, it can be accelerated using other voltages, giving this ion kinetic energy. We keep doing this until the ion has been accelerated through millions of volts of electric potential. (You'll probably learn more about electricity and voltage, etc, later in the school year.) Anyway, charges can be accelerated by electric fields, so that's how we get very heavy atoms up to very high speed -- that's where their kinetic energy comes from. Then, we collide these high-speed atoms into metal targets (typically) so that they can interact with the atoms in the targets, and sometimes the two nuclei stick and make even heavier atoms and interesting isotopes.

I haven't been here at MSU all that long, so I'm not sure if they have actually discovered a brand new element; but we have been the first to discover various isotopes of already known elements, and we have the best complex in the nation for studying rare elements and isotopes in great detail.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 09 1:12PM

Dr. Syphers,

I thank you for all the help you have gave me. It sounds like you have quite the job, and your work has piqued my interest. Again on the behalf of my partners and myself, I would like to thank you for all the information that you have provided us.

Many thanks,

Josh

The Daily Grin

2010-11-22T23:00:00.002-06:00

Introduction - Oct 21 4:09PM

Dr. Syphers,

Hello! My name is Katie and I am a senior at [...] high school. I am currently taking physics because the classes I would like to study in college (veterinary technition) said it was a good idea. In school I enjoy being on the girls varsity volleyball team, along with the marching and jazz band's.

Now, I would love to know something about you. Like, what kind of physics do you use on a daily basis?

Re: Introduction - Oct 25 12:28AM

Hi Katie,

I hope you are enjoying your physics class so far. It great to see that you, and so many of your classmates, and other students I see at other schools, are into sports and music and theater and all kinds of stuff. That's really great.

I probably use basic physics that I learned in high school and my first years of college really almost every single day. In my job we are constantly doing quick little calculations to estimate things that we want to study, and then once we have a "plan of attack," we will have to do much more detailed calculations which involve higher level math and computers and stuff like that. As you might learn, there are many areas of physics, like particle physics, astrophysics, solid state physics, etc. I mainly do Nuclear Physics these days, but have worked in particle physics and astrophysics a little bit in the past. What I do for each of these is called "accelerator physics" because I study how to build particle accelerators that can be used in order to do controlled experiments in all of these sub-disciplines of physics. I think it is really a lot of fun, and very rewarding.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 04 2:41PM

Dr. Syphers,

Your job sounds very interesting and slightly difficult! Which area of work did you find most interesting or exciting to work with so far?

-Katie

Re: Re: Re: Introduction - Nov 04 4:03PM

Hi Katie,

Another student at another school asked me the exact same question the other day; here's my reply:

"It's really hard to point to one thing in my career and call that the most interesting thing I've done. I continue to learn new things every day, and the excitement of learning and solving problems and figuring things out is always there. I thought I knew a lot about accelerators (and compared to most people, I guess I do), but I just took this new job at MSU this year and we are building an accelerator which has requirements on the beams and systems which I have never had to deal with before. But, rather than saying "I don't want to do that because I don't know how," I like to say, "I want to do that because I don't know how." Know what I mean?

"Right now I'm working with a team of scientists, engineers, and technicians and we are trying to design a system that will accelerate a large variety of different atomic isotopes, smash them into targets, collect the by-products (which will also be a very large range of different types of elements), slow them down and collect them, then re-accelerate them to well-defined known energies so that they can be systematically studied -- all before most of them radioactively decay away. And I only do the "accelerator" part; there's a whole other team that figures out how to actually DETECT these nuclei and determine their energies, masses, charges, lifetimes, and so on. Then, with that information, people can better deduce how stars are made and evolve and how the universe is put together. So, that's what I'm doing right now, and I'm just never sure how to make the job more interesting than that…"

Hope that helps answer your question, too.

All the best,
-Mike

Choosing a career path...

2010-11-21T22:55:00.004-06:00

Thanks - Oct 20 2:11PM

Dr. Syphers,

Our names are Brendan, Larry and George, and we are students at [...]. We all have enjoyed physics and mathmetics since we can remember and are very excited to learn more about physics.

Thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to help us learn and entering the Adopt-a-Physicist this year.

Re: Thanks - Oct 20 7:19PM

It's good to hear from you guys at [...]. I hope you are having fun in school. What year are you all in? Juniors? Seniors?

-Mike

Re: Re: Thanks - Oct 26 2:07PM

We are definetly having fun in school and expecially physics. All three of us are currently seniors and will graduate this year. We are looking forward to your response on our last posting!

Teaching Physics - Oct 22 1:50PM

Dr. Syphers,

What made you want to become a professor in Physics? Is there something about it more rewarding to you than any other physics occupation?

Thank you,

Brendan, Larry, and George

Re: Teaching Physics - Oct 26 2:17PM

Hi Brendan, Larry, and George:

Sorry my response didn't get posted earlier; I wrote it the other day, but must have forgotten to press "send".

That's an interesting question. I've worked mostly at large, National Laboratories, like Fermilab and Brookhaven Lab, and I found that what I really enjoy is not only doing the research and development of accelerators and such, but that I really enjoy sharing what I've learned and working with younger people to see them learn and excel. Maybe I'm just older now and I feel that I want to "give back" a little bit, but then I guess I've always liked teaching -- it always felt natural to me.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Teaching Physics - Nov 08 12:52PM

Dr. Syphers

What did you do before you became a teacher? I am very interested in physics and am considering majoring in a science.

Thanks,

Larry

Re: Re: Re: Teaching Physics - Nov 08 6:27PM

Hi Larry,

I actually studied to become a teacher while in college, and taught High School physics for one year after college. Then, I got a job at Fermilab, where I worked as an "operator" in their Main Control Room, learning how to operate the large particle accelerators there. That got me very interested in the physics of particle beams and how the accelerators actually work. So, I went back to school -- while I still worked at Fermilab -- and got my Master's and PhD degrees. So, I ended up mostly designing and helping to construct and implement new ideas for particle accelerators. I kept teaching once in a while, though at the college level by then. And so, eventually (very recently) got a job as a college professor here at MSU.

I think no matter what science you may find interesting to pursue, physics will be a strong part of your necessary background. There are even departments of "Biophysics" now days. It's a very fundamental science.

Cheers,
-Mike

Black Holes

2010-11-20T22:53:00.004-06:00

Hello - Oct 19 10:43PM

Dr. Syphers,

I am Daniel and I am an Honors Physics student at […]. Though my favorite subjects in school are more in the areas of the arts and humanities, I like to think that I have a healthy appreciation for science and math. I was fascinated by your work with particle accelerators, especially because of how prominent they have been in the news in recently due to your project and the LHC project. I was wondering, did you consider any other fields or careers before pursuing your Ph. D. in particle accelerator physics? Thank you so much for participating in this program, and I am excited to have this opportunity to learn from you.

Thank you,

Daniel

Re: Hello - Oct 19 11:17PM

Hi Daniel,

Well, in all honesty, I think in my heart that I wanted to be a scientist ever since I was a very young kid (maybe 7 or 8 years old). But, at that time, I was very interested in astronomy. In fact, the Gemini and Apollo programs were going on, and men going to the moon, so that motivated me a lot. But, as I went through Jr and Sr High School, I did think about other fields -- most notably, architecture, mechanical drawing and graphic arts, and journalism. (I was editor of our high school newspaper, which was a very good paper at a big school in Indianapolis.) But, I finally decided against a career in journalism and follow my dream to learn more astronomy and ultimately physics.

It's nice to hear from all of you at [...]. How large is your physics class?

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Hello - Oct 25 11:29PM

I'm interested to hear more about your experience with astronomy. For me, I've always enjoyed marveling at the stars—and I do this quite often—but beyond this and the occasional use of a friend's telescope, I've never gone much deeper. Nevertheless, I would say that astronomy is probably my favorite topic in science. What fascinates me about it is the sheer beauty and vastness and magnificence of space. For example, to me, the photos from the Hubble telescope are just breathtaking, and I find it incredible to think of this massive expanse so filled with wonders and possibilities. What was it that drew you to astronomy, and in turn to physics?

Our school is pretty small—only about 100 students per grade—so my physics class only has 12 people in it.

Thanks!

Daniel

Re: Re: Re: Hello - Oct 25 11:49PM

Hi Daniel,

I think I liked astronomy for the very reasons that you do. When I was very young, the Gemini and Apollo space programs were in full swing. I would go outside and look at the stars and moon and think, "what would it look like from space"? And then I'd wonder about just what I was seeing when I looked at the stars. Finally, my parents got me a (very small) telescope, and I started trying to find star clusters and planets and such. This became a hobby from the time I was about 8 years old until well into adulthood. Anyway, when I got to high school and after studying the usual math courses and biology and chemistry, it was finally time for me to take a course called Physics. I had no idea what that was, but when I saw a chapter in the book entitled something like "Gravity and Planetary Motion", I suddenly knew that THIS was what I wanted to learn about -- REALLY learn about. And I've been hooked on physics ever since.

Now, even though I don't do astronomy much any more, I am helping to build an accelerator that is going to smash heavy elements together (like krypton and uranium atoms) to reproduce conditions that can only occur naturally in stars, and hence we will learn more about stellar formation and how nuclear fusion works inside of stars. Interesting how life "comes around" full circle, eh? …

I hope you enjoy your physics class. It can be an extremely powerful subject.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Oct 28 5:52PM

Dr. Syphers,

That sounds incredibly fascinating! I don't know very much about accelerators, but the knowledge we could gain from them sounds extremely useful. I remember how, on the day the LHC project began, several of my friends were saying things like "they're making a black hole that's going to suck the earth into it!" and things like that…

I guess it would be good (and possibly reassuring!) to hear from someone on the forefront of the technology: how do these accelerators work? And is there any real risk that a black hole large enough to envelop the earth could be created?

Thanks,

Daniel

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 01 12:18AM

Hi Daniel,

You'll likely talk about electricity and magnetism next semester in your physics class. The accelerators work by creating intense electric fields that "attract" charged particles and thus give them energy; then magnets are often used to steer them around corners or in circles so that they can be accelerated again by the electric fields until they reach very high speeds (near the speed of light). The most powerful accelerator in the world was, for the past 25 years or so, the accelerator at Fermilab where I used to work. Now, the LHC has taken that title over, though there is still work to be done there before it is at its full power.

As for black hole formation, I did study that a bit a year or so ago when everyone was talking about it. The concept of a black hole is very intriguing, and very likely does occur in stellar systems. And, in "theory", there can be very tiny black holes -- but, they wouldn't stick around very long. Black holes actually radiate away; and the time it would take for a black hole (again, in "theory" -- no one has ever definitively detected a black hole, of any size) created at the LHC to radiate away to nothing would be something like 10^-86 seconds (10 to the minus 86th power -- VERY short time!!!). That's one argument against anything happening with the LHC; before a black hole in the LHC could move over and start gobbling up other particles, it would be gone! The other argument is that particles come from the sun and galaxy with energies much much larger than the LHC can even produce. So, if black holes capable of eating up the earth could be formed through particle collisions, it would have happened by now and we wouldn't be here. So, I'm not afraid of anything like that occurring from the LHC or any other particle accelerator.

But, it's a good thing to discuss. Because black holes are all "theoretical", we cannot say for certainty that things absolutely cannot happen. We can only say that it's very, very unlikely, and try to make statistical arguments to convince people of this. But, some wise-guy who wants his name in the papers can always say "Then that means it COULD happen" and try to get everyone scared. That's what went on last year or so when it was all the buzz…

I was actually asked about this when I was on Modern Marvels (episode: "Collisions"), but they only gave me about 15 seconds on TV… But it was really cool being interviewed by them!

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 01 11:28PM

Dr. Syphers,

Thanks for the reply, that explanation was more than adequate! I now feel much more informed about particle accelerators! How much time do you think it will take for the LHC to reach its full power? Also what are the implications for our understanding of the universe if the LHC reached this point? In other words, do you have any predictions about the exactly how much we could learn from a fully powered accelerator?

I'm not familiar with the Modern Marvels show, but I'll definitely want to look into it! Do you get many opportunities to be interviewed for TV shows any other types of media?

Thanks,

Daniel

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 02 12:28AM

Hi Daniel,

The LHC has had a few technical difficulties, and they are operating at only one half of their top energy. So, they will shut the LHC off for about a year or so and make the repairs they need to make to get it to go to top energy. Since they're running right now, that means, it will be about 1.5 years from now before they get to top energy. Meanwhile, they still have a way to go until they reach the total number of particles in their particle beams that they want to have. So, to get to their ultimate numbers, it's probably about 2-3 years away. Meanwhile, the Tevatron collider at Fermilab near Chicago is operating right now at its peak performance. Even though it's only 1/7 the energy of the LHC's eventual top energy, it has lots more particle collisions per second and lots of data already taken and stored on computer disks for analysis. So, it will take the LHC about 3 years or more so to catch up to the Tevatron, and eventually pass it and go way beyond.

Some of the questions that the LHC will try to study when it gets all up to speed will be, "Why do particles (like electrons, protons, quarks, etc.) have the masses that they have?" "Are there other forces in the universe, and/or other dimensions to the universe that we can learn about at these new energies?" "Can we explain why there is more matter in the universe than there is antimatter? (Which is why we exist at all, and weren't just annihilated after the Big Bang)" And other things like that…

Modern Marvels is a show on the History Channel, if you have cable tv or satellite dish. I've been in a couple of newspaper articles, and a magazine article or two. I had the back of my head in a picture in TIME magazine once -- made it big time, eh?

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 04 11:07PM

Dr. Syphers,

Wow, it sounds like this research will teach us plenty about our universe, and probably revel more questions that we haven't even considered yet!

I'm interested to know—how did you get involved all of this particle accelerator work, especially the Tevatron project? Also, what would you consider to be your dream scientific project? Or, if you could be researching anything in the universe at this moment, what would it be?

And congratulations on having the back of your head featured in TIME magazine—I'd consider that to be quite the accomplishment!

Thanks,

Daniel

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 07 4:30PM

Hi Daniel,

When I got out of college I taught as a high school physics teacher for one year, and then found a job at Fermilab as an "accelerator operator." The job taught me how to control and operate the big accelerators at Fermilab, and after working at that for a couple of years I decided to go back to school to learn more physics so that I could better understand how these machines really worked, and how to help develop new ones. This was about the time that the Tevatron was being constructed, and so I got to help work on its final construction and commissioning. It was a very exciting time, much like the LHC project today.

Researching "anything"? I guess I still like the idea of studying the evolution of the universe, astrophysics, black holes, and so forth. To me, those topics incorporate some of the "ultimate" questions of the physical world.

-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 07 10:55PM

Dr. Syphers,

I was reading an article today, and it mentioned that Albert Einstein didn't believe in the existence of black holes. Have you heard anything about this or do know why he might have believed this? Are there many physicists today who still don't believe in black holes?

Also, what would you say the "ultimate" questions of the physical world are? And do you think we'll ever find the answers to them?

Thanks,

Daniel

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 08 12:18AM

Hi Daniel,

I don't know about that fact regarding Einstein, but I do think that the idea of a Black Hole must have sounded pretty crazy to folks 100 years ago, even though solutions to his own equations suggested their existence. Sometimes scientists come up with crazy-sounding solutions to problems. Sometimes we make mistakes (often?), but we keep testing and checking our answers until we convince ourselves and others that we have good answers; then, we do experiments to verify our results, etc. Einstein probably thought it was going to be very hard to verify that Black Holes exist, and that would have been a correct assessment!

These days, I think most scientists who are up on the subject believe that black holes exist. There is very strong evidence that they exist at the center of galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy! But, they have not been "directly" seen; we can only detect the motion of stars that are circulating about the center of the galaxy whose motions are "consistent" with a Black Hole being there. Pretty cool! Check out:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/21feb_mwbh/

As for the second part of your question, check out this web site:

http://www.interactions.org/quantumuniverse/qu/

This report lists many of today's "ultimate" questions that you are speaking about.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello - Nov 09 12:13PM

Dr. Syphers,

Thank you so much for being my adopted physicist for these few weeks! I have learned so much from you and I definitely have a greater appreciation for the field of physics than when we began. It is truly inspirational to encounter a person who truly loves their work and followed their dreams! Hopefully later in life, I can say that I did the same.

It has been a pleasure learning from you!

Thanks,

Daniel

Accelerators and Technology Evolution

2010-11-19T22:50:00.003-06:00

Benjamin from […], NC - Oct 19 6:24PM

Dr. Syphers,

Hello, my name is Benjamin and I am currently a Junior at […] in North Carolina. I have always had a strong interest in the mathematics and science. I plan to pursue my interest in these subjects by studying some sort of engineering while in college. I have found your work with particle accelerators very interesting. It is a topic I do not know much about but I cannot wait to learn more about it in the upcoming weeks. While you currently hold a PhD you originally graduated from Indiana many years prior. In your biography you state that you worked as a teacher and at Fermilab prior to receiving your Masters and then PhD. I was wondering if you ended up getting your PhD in the same topic that you majored in and why you felt it necessary to get a higher degree. I would like to thank you for participating in the Adopt-A-Physicist program, I am sure I am going to learn a lot over these next few weeks and so will everyone else in the program.

Thank you,

Benjamin

Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Oct 19 11:11PM

Hello, Benjamin,

Yes, all of my three degrees were in Physics, although the Bachelor's degree was in physics education (teaching). As for "why" I wanted the PhD, it was sort of two-fold. First of all, I enjoyed the job that I had at the time -- working at Fermilab in its Main Control Room -- and so I knew that if I went back to school I could work there (or other labs) and continue to get better positions and better pay. But, secondly (probably more importantly), I also just wanted to learn physics. I wanted to better understand how the physical world works and how it's all related. I probably would have wanted to study this subject, even if there were no degrees or jobs involved! But, it certainly helps when someone wants to pay me for it! ;-)

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Oct 27 10:44PM

Dr. Syphers,

Could you explain to me your work with the particle accelerators and how you feel your research has/will make the world a better place, or do you believe we are still in the early stages of just needing to understand the world before we can even begin to improve it?

Since I am rather interested in math and science, what classes do you suggest I take in my senior year? I also know however that classes are not everything, do you have any other advice for how I should go about my next few years?

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Benjamin

Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Oct 28 12:15AM

Hi Benjamin,

Let me try to answer in a couple of ways. First off, I work on large particle accelerators that are used for basic research -- like trying to understand the basic building blocks of nature. However, there have been many, many "spin-offs" of accelerator research over the years. For instance, devices that are used in medicine, such as CAT scans, PET scans, and proton therapy cancer treatment utilize particle beams; accelerators are used in food sanitation and in such industrial applications such as making shrinkable plastics (like the plastic wrap that you find on all kinds of packages these days). And, in fact, the TV set you had in your home as a child (or maybe even still have) -- before "flat panel TV's" came out -- were particle accelerators! So, you can say that the results of the basic research may be decades away from influencing every day life (like, how do we use neutrinos in our home life?), but the development of accelerators and their associated systems have always found other applications that have had very big effects on our world.

Secondly, I do think that my efforts to help build and operate accelerators like, for instance, the Tevatron at Fermilab will end up in the long run having an impact on civilization and making the world a better place. It's hard right now to tell what that will be -- it may take many years for the results of our experiments to lead to new technologies, for instance. But, I played a role in it, so that's very satisfying to know. Of course, several thousand people have worked on the Tevatron over the years, so mine was just a small part of that. But we each have our role to play, and it took all of us to make it happen. Now, I get to do it again at MSU with our new accelerator here.

OK, as for your classes and advice… With your interest, I would try to take any/all science and math that the school offers. Is there a "second year" or AP physics course? Do you have calculus courses at your school? Take what you can. I think the MOST important thing is to find what you enjoy and are good at, and pursue that with all the passion you can muster up. Even if you're good at something, if you don't enjoy doing it it will always feel like "work". If, however, you love what you do, then you'll never have to "work" at all.

Do you have any special hobbies, sports, other interests?

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Oct 31 9:50AM

Dr. Syphers,

Wow, I never knew how particle accelerators are used in all aspects of today's life.

Yes I do plan on taking a second year of Physics, Advance Topics In Physics, I believe that course is called. I am currently taking Pre-Calculus and next year I plan to take AP Calc. I have to definitely agree with you that the most important thing is to do what you love to do.

I co-direct the school's morning news program. While it is pretty stressful to get the show ready every morning, it is a lot of fun and I am really learning how to run an "organization" and solve different problems that arise.

I have a big love for technology and I can explore my interest in the morning news program and in a class I am taking called "Computer and Network Essentials". Five years ago my school began a one-one tablet to student program. Each student has his/her own tablet PC. This gives me another outlet to explore with technology. In the Computer and Network Essentials class, we help the IT department with student computer problems. I also play on the Varsity Baseball team and play the violin.

While I can only imagine that you are rather busy, what other hobbies to you have?

Thank you.

Benjamin

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Nov 01 12:22AM

Hi Benjamin,

That's great to hear about what all you're involved in. When I was in high school I was the Managing Editor and then Editor-in-Chief of our school newspaper. I went to a large school, and our paper was written, typeset (pre-computer days, if you can imagine), laid-out, and printed in our school -- 8 page paper (standard newspaper size) every week. It was a lot of work, and I enjoyed it immensely. But, when it came time to chose a future direction, science won out for me. I, too, did sports -- cross country, basketball, and tennis.

And, I'll tell you too, that keeping active in lots of stuff keeps your body (including brain) in shape for doing the things you enjoy the most.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Nov 07 9:00AM

Dr. Syphers,

It sounds like you were quite busy when you were in high school.

Technology has/is really becoming a big part in our society, as a means of communication and such, besides for the actual particle accelerator, would you say you use technology such as computers and smart phones on a daily basis. How much has technology changed since you received your PhD in 1987?

Thanks!

Benjamin

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Nov 07 4:33PM

Hi Benjamin,

I use computers and smart phones and skype and internet and all of that on a daily basis. Probably, more of an "hourly" basis. I'm typing this on my Macbook Pro, over my wireless internet at my home while I watch a Netflix film being streamed over my home network to my HD TV. So yes, technology has changed a lot -- I mean, A LOT! -- since 1987. Back then, personal computers were relatively new. The computer that I had used 48KB of memory, compared to 4 GB (= 48,000,000 KB) today and ran more than 3000 times slower than today's computers. It wasn't a "windowing" type of computer; you had to type in commands line-by-line. Email was very new, and only accessible by people at National Labs and government agencies. The web hadn't been invented yet, so there were no such things as "web pages" and such. If I wanted to talk to someone by telephone and they lived outside of my community, I had to pay maybe about 50 cents a minute or more to talk to them (long distance telephone). Cell phones were nonexistent, except that a few extremely rich business people had them (from what I saw on TV and in the movies!). CD's had just become available to the masses in about 1986; before that we all had vinyl record albums and record players with diamond-tipped needles. No iPods; no GPS; no DVD or Blue Ray; no … I remember my sister and her husband had a garage door that could be opened by "remote control". That was pretty cool! The list of changes since 1987 is HUGE!

I must say, one of the best things about being in the physics work world, and working at national labs and universities, is that you often get to be the first to use such technology as it is developed. For example, by the time people started using AOL email accounts in the mid-1990's, I had already been using email for about 10 years at the National Labs to communicate with other scientists. And the web was invented by physicists at CERN in Europe in 1991. The two very first web sites in the U.S. were at SLAC and at Fermilab, two high energy physics labs, in 1991-2. (I guess they needed two, so that they could check out how to "link" them to each other!)

Never a dull moment!

-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Nov 07 9:07AM

Dr. Syphers,

On Thursday my school was invited to the IMAPS (international microelectronics and packaging) symposium (http://www.imaps.org/imaps2010/index.htm). My school opened it up to 20 or so interested students and I went along with 12 others. It was rather interesting experience, I got to speak to many different companies involved in the business. Prior to the conference I really did not know much at all about the microelectronics packaging industry, but I learned a lot and really enjoyed it. For the businesses involved it was really a time to learn from the others in the industry.

Are there similar events in your line of work?

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Benjamin

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Nov 07 4:34PM

Hi Benjamin,

Yes, we have lots of events like that. Physicists spend quite a bit of time communicating with each other at conferences and such events. I will be going to the U.S. Particle Accelerator Conference in New York City this Spring, for instance. About 2000 scientists and engineers who work on accelerators or in the field of accelerator science will gather for a week and have meetings and talks and discussions about their work with each other. This particular conference meets every two years, at different places around the country; but there are several other conferences too, that report on the results of experiments that use the accelerators, for instance. It is very important to reflect on your own work and share it with others, and to hear about what they have been doing. Conferences like this are very useful part of the job, and great things to participate in.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Nov 08 9:42PM

Dr. Syphers,

So it seems that the Adopt-a-Physicist program is about to come to an end. I would like to thank you for the your time and the interesting conversation we have had, I have really learned a lot about your field of work and how things have changed even for just the short time that you have been in your area of study.

I never realized how the work you are doing with the particle accelerators, will have such large effects on our world in the near future. I think its really cool how you have been on the leading edge of technology for the past couple of decades. I could go on with you for years about my love for technology and my opinions on the latest technologies but time doesn't allow it. I also appreciate your advice towards my future in college and beyond. I had a great experience communicating with you.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Benjamin

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Benjamin from [...], NC - Nov 08 11:06PM

Hi Benjamin,

I'm happy that I've had an opportunity to chat with you and all the other students. When I was your age I had no real opportunity to "talk" to scientists about their work day or their lives or things like that. I think it's a great thing to be able to do, and the internet makes it so easy.

Good luck with your school year, and -- when you're thinking about college -- check out MSU! ;-)

Cheers,
-Mike

An Introduction

2010-11-18T22:46:00.002-06:00

Introduction - Oct 19 1:57PM

Hello, thank you for adopting me in the Adopt-a-Physicist program.

To get an idea of who I am, you can view my profile.

-Mike Syphers

Hello from North Carolina - Oct 19 4:51PM

Mr. Syphers,

My name is Keenan and I am an Honors Physics student at […]. In school, my two favorite subjects are math and physics. I am also an all-Conference baseball player here in North Carolina. I am very interested in your field of accelerator physics because it seems to be one of the most specialized fields of study in the world. Particle accelerators seem to be gaining in popularity worldwide, and you seem like a foremost authority. I was wondering, what made you decide to enter this field of physical study? What do you find so unique about accelerator physics that made you chose this field for a career? I also just wanted to thank you for participating in the Adopt a Physicist program. I really appreciate it and I know that this will be a great experience for everyone who is involved.

Thank you,

Keenan

Re: Hello from North Carolina - Oct 19 11:10PM

Hi Keenan,

Good to hear from you. In a sense, I sort of "fell into" the field soon out of college. I had my Bachelor's degree, and a friend was working at Fermilab -- in the suburbs of Chicago -- and told me I should apply. It was a great opportunity, and a great job, but most of all I really enjoyed working on the large machines and learning about how they worked. I soon realized that I could (a) use the physics I learned in my 4 years of college, and (b) learn a lot of new physics and new generate new skills. I liked "turning knobs" in the control room, seeing things happen before my eyes, and then I wanted more to learn why it all happened. So, I had to go back to school to learn more physics so I could "speak the language" and go further in the subject. And, at that time, it allowed me to be connected to world-leading research while I studied, which is truly unique. The big accelerator labs are very exciting places.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Oct 26 8:39PM

Dr. Syphers,

Thank you for you post. It's so interesting the various ways that people like yourself end up in the field of study and profession that you did. But now that your official job has changed, is as much time as you would like spent doing research? I understand that you are a professor at Michigan State, and I can understand how educating young minds would be an exciting endeavor, but it seems to me that your true passion lies in researching accelerator physics and developing cutting edge technology for it.

-Keenan

Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Oct 27 3:22PM

Hi Keenan,

Very interesting line of questioning. Ever consider law? ;-)

Actually , yes I think it's a good mix for me right now. I am in a position now where I can do research, help manage a $0.6B project, and teach and mentor physics students all at the same time. And make a good living doing it! And, a big part of "managing" for me is directing efforts to solve very complex problems. So, in a technical sense, it is still very satisfying.

Cheers,
-Mike
Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Oct 31 5:34PM

Dr. Syphers,

Happy Halloween! I hope the students up in East Lansing haven't been too wild in their festivities. I was wondering about your early interest in physics. Have you always known what field you wanted to be in and always worked towards that field (I guess in this case accelerator physics)? Or when you were in school did you ever contemplate different applications of physics like engineering or something to that effect.

Thanks,

Keenan

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 01 12:23AM

Hi Keenan,

Lots of students out roaming around, but behaving for the most part. ;-)

I really got interested in "science" at a young age. When I was growing up (10 years old, say), the Gemini and Apollo space programs were going on, and I loved learning about the stars, planets, sun and moon, etc. So, I started out wanting to be an astronomer or astrophysicist when I first went to college. However, I learned quickly that there weren't too many jobs in that field at that time (many more these days than back then), and so for a while I didn't know exactly what field of physics to go into. When I got the job at Fermilab after college, I found "accelerator physics" and really enjoyed the work. So, that's when I went on in that direction.

Also in high school, I did think a little about engineering and architecture, and many of my friends in science/math went those directions. I also thought about journalism, too.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 02 11:12AM

Dr. Syphers,

As an expert in you field, what has been the most interesting thing you have ever done? Have you learned anything or discovered something that has truly fascinated you or given you a new appreciation or love for your studies?

-Keenan

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 02 8:09PM

Hi Keenan,

It's really hard to point to one thing in my career and call that the most interesting thing I've done. I continue to learn new things every day, and the excitement of learning and solving problems and figuring things out is always there. I thought I knew a lot about accelerators (and compared to most people, I guess I do), but I just took this new job at MSU this year and we are building an accelerator which has requirements on the beams and systems which I have never had to deal with before. But, rather than saying "I don't want to do that because I don't know how," I like to say, "I want to do that because I don't know how." Know what I mean?

Right now I'm working with a team of scientists, engineers, and technicians and we are trying to design a system that will accelerate a large variety of different atomic isotopes, smash them into targets, collect the by-products (which will also be a very large range of different types of elements), slow them down and collect them, then re-accelerate them to well-defined known energies so that they can be systematically studied -- all before most of them radioactively decay away. And I only do the "accelerator" part; there's a whole other team that figures out how to actually DETECT these nuclei and determine their energies, masses, charges, lifetimes, and so on. Then, with that information, people can better deduce how stars are made and evolve and how the universe is put together. So, that's what I'm doing right now, and I'm just never sure how to make the job more interesting than that…

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 03 8:28PM

Dr. Syphers,

Wow. I get the feeling that you may be one of the minorities that really loves and has a passion for what they do. Those are really incredible experiments. I may not have be the most knowledgeable, but I at least know that life is better when you do something you enjoy. But I just have a quick clarification question. Do you work with developing the accelerator or accelerating the particles themselves? Or both? It seems like the only people that would understand how to build the accelerators must know how to accelerate the particles, and vice versa.

-Keenan

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 03 11:27PM

Hi Keenan,

I tend to work on all aspects of these accelerators. As you succinctly surmised, I started out learning how to accelerate particles in existing accelerators, which led me to learn how they work, and thus ultimately learned how to build new ones. And I still do a little of all of that.

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 07 5:24PM

Dr. Syphers,

Do you have any recommendations about physics to a young student that is interested in the subject? I find it fascinating, but I know nothing about the professional field and even less about the depths of the subject itself.

-Keenan

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 08 12:15AM

Hi Keenan,

One good place to start might be to go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) and look up physics, and then follow the various links to see if they lead you to interesting places. (I'll bet they will!) Also, the professional society for physicists is called The American Physical Society, and their web site has a section about Careers in Physics. (see: http://www.aps.org/careers/) Those two web sites should get you going!

Best of luck, and I hope you continue to enjoy your physics class this year!

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello from North Carolina - Nov 09 10:12AM

Dr. Syphers,

I wanted to thank you for everything you have done with the Adopt-a-Physicist program. I have really appreciated it and have really enjoyed getting to speak with you about the world of physics. Thank you for everything.

Sincerely,

Keenan

Adopted yet again...

2010-11-17T22:33:00.003-06:00

Another semester, another Adopt-A-Physicist session through the American Physical Society. This time, I was marked by three schools from Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina. There was quite a bit of discussion back and forth. Much of it was like the other sessions, but as always there were new questions and new takes on old subjects. Again, a great experience for me; I hope it was for the students! (I feel that it was.)

In the past when I have posted these discussions, I tried organizing posts by topics, or I have posted items in pure chronological order. This time, I have organized the entries by "threads" -- the threaded conversation between me and a particular student (or group of students) from beginning to end. Some of the threads are fairly long, especially the earliest ones. However, I will post each "thread" in its entirety to try to preserve the discussion. I'll be posting these over the next many days (probably for a couple of weeks or so). Hope you enjoy, too!

Note: for more information on Adopt-A-Physicist, visit...
http://www.adoptaphysicist.org/

-Mike

Another AaP comes to an end

2010-02-12T16:18:00.001-06:00

Oct 29 1:34PM - Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!
46 Posts
hahaha. That thought did cross our minds, but don't worry we'll be good. We are unsure about our plans for halloween. D plans on launching more pumpkins though. Thank you so much for evrything and your time. We've learned a lot from you.
Goodbye from your fellow physicists,
D, A2, K and A :]

Reply:
Goodbye, everyone! I hope you enjoy the rest of your school year, and your physics class especially!
Best wishes,
-Mike

pictures...

2010-02-11T16:18:00.005-06:00

Oct 26 10:51PM - Re: Re: ..
31 Posts
So, I was just reading through the other posts here, and I thought of some more questions.   I really like the picture you posted of your particle accelerator! That is amazing! Where does all the "action" take place within the ring?   I read that you had an interest in photography. I have recently really gotten into photography myself. What kinds of photography most interest you? Does your knowledge and interest in physics affect your understanding of photography?  Again, thanks for your time!  M

Reply:
Hi M,
Glad the picture helps. The "action"? Well, the particles go around and around and collide head on at two places -- I have tried to mark them with red circles in the photo here...

Each beam of particles going around contains trillions of particles. Each time the groups of particles pass through each other, only a few actually "hit" the other beam, because the particles are so small and don't take up much space. But, since they go around again they get another chance to collide again (and again, and again,... all day long).

Calculate how many times a particle (that survives and doesn't get hit!) goes around the ring (4 miles around) in 24 hours, moving at the speed of light...

(sorry for the homework problem!) ;-)

I like lots of different styles of photography, but mostly take landscape or scenery photos, myself. You can see some of my photos at my Picasa site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/syphersm/AssortedFavorites
And yes, my knowledge of physics helps a great deal. Photography is all (mostly) about exposure of the film (or, CCD these days) -- time and aperture, lenses, depth of field, contrast, etc. So, there's light ray optics, time, space, diffraction, as well as all the electonic capabilities of modern cameras -- it's essentially all physics with a lot of "art" thrown in! I think its great!

Cheers,
-Mike

Oct 28 12:41PM - Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!
37 Posts
wow what a beautiful picture!! Rochester doesn't compare to Chicago, but it does look pretty in the fall. That's cool about your kids I hope they succeed. What are you doing for halloween?
Reply:
My wife and I will be going to a party with some friends on Friday night, and then we'll be passing out out candy at the house for a few hours on Saturday. What about you?
And don't tell me you'll be launching pumpkins at the neighbors!!
-Mike

Getting there

2010-02-10T16:17:00.002-06:00

Oct 26 10:31PM - a
31 Posts
Hi!  
Another senior here. Just wondering what kind of courses you took in college, and how you came about the job you have now.  
-M2

Reply:
Hi M2,
I took a lot of physics, astronomy, and mathematics -- probably half of all my courses were in those subjects. I also minored in psychology and I took a lot of education courses so that I could get my teaching certificate. After all that, there were the usual English, philosophy, art appreciation, etc., etc. I really enjoyed college a lot!

After I got out of college I got a teaching job teaching high school physics and math. I only taught for one year, because the school ran out of money and laid people off. But then I got an intro job at Fermilab which was just down the road. I found that FASCINATING and it compelled me to go back to school to study more physics and get my Masters and PhD degrees. I think it's important to really try to do what you love to do. If you love your work, then you'll always be happy working, right? AND, since you love what you do, you'll probably become really good at it and therefore earn a good living at it!

Cheers,
-Mike

Delta p over Delta t

2010-02-09T16:17:00.005-06:00

Oct 26 1:40PM - Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!
32 Posts

we are currently learning that F=ma. what does F= delta P/ Delta t stand for? thats cool about your son and daughter. what colleges did they go to? What are your children planning to be when they graduate? Most of use are undecided, but we will probably end up going to the community college. A used to live in Illinois for 3 years. Have you ever been to Chicago? Have you ever been in a tornado before? would you ever want to study them?

Reply:
Hi,

Newton actually first described his second law in terms of momentum. He said that for an object to have its momentum altered (mass time velocity) then a force has to be applied over a certain length of time. So, F= delta P/ Delta t means that the force is equal to the change in momentum divided by the change in time. But it isn't often introduced that way these days, at least not in High School physics.

My daughter is at Purdue University in Indiana, and my son is at a local community college here where we live, near Chicago. She is studying hotel management, and he is studying emergency medicine to become a paramedic.

I've been to Chicago many, many times. It is a really beautiful city, one of my all-time favorites. I've attached a photo of Chicago taken (not by me) from the top of the Fermilab main building. It was taken at sunset one day of the year when the sun reflects off of the buildings directly back toward Fermilab.

I have not ever seen a tornado. But I've seen first-hand what they can do, and have been close before! I'm not sure I'd be up to studying them up close, though!

Cheers,
-Mike

Oct 26 10:10PM - Re: Re: ...
31 Posts
Thanks so much for your reply! We really appreciate your time!  
M

Physics Hero

2010-02-08T21:07:00.000-06:00

Oct 22 9:57PM - ...
27 Posts

Hello Dr. Syphers! I was wondering why you first became interested in physics? Did someone have a particular influence on you (like a parent or a teacher, or a famous physicist)? On a similar note, did you have a favorite physicist as a student?

~M
Reply:

Hi M,

Good to hear from you. I think I first became interested in science at a young age, like about 6-7 years old. I was very interested in the things that were going on in the space program (Gemini, Apollo, etc.) and wanted to learn all about the stars and moon and planets. It wasn't until I was in High School that I found out that "physics" was the science that talked about all that. That's when I knew I wanted to study physics (and astronomy and astrophysics!). My older sister was an influence -- she bought me my first astronomy book and a star chart for my wall! -- and my Boy Scout Master was an amateur astronomer and taught me a lot. My H.S. physics teacher was wonderful and a huge influence on me, too!

As far as a favorite physicist, another school group asked me that same question, so I'll cut and past the same answer here.

"... And, as for my favorite scientist? Newton and Einstein always come to mind. However, I have always like a guy named James Clerk Maxwell. You'll learn about him probably much later in the year. But he did a LOT of things, including the final synthesis that showed the world how light, electricity, and magnetism are all related. He also showed (using pure logic, pen and paper) that the rings of Saturn could not be solid objects -- that they must be made up of broken up rocks or small particles of some sort. It was really quite an amazing thing to calculate and convince people back in the mid-1800's. He won a prize and became famous by that calculation. He did a lot of other things, too, but those are what I remember about him, and I always thought he was a cool dude."

Thanks, M!
-Mike

Oct 23 1:31PM - Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!
27 Posts
Wow thats cool! We're learning Newton's laws right now. What's your favorite Newton's law? So far we've learned the first one and working on the second one. What's your favorite movies? We like The Hangover, Austin Powers Goldmember, Transformers, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Breakfast Club, In the Persuit of Happiness, and 7 Pounds. Do you have any kids? Do they like physics? Talk to you later! Your fellow physicists! :]

Reply:
Hi WSHS:
Glad to hear you're enjoying learning about Sir Issac! It's hard to pick a "favorite" law of his three, but probably the second law is used the most in everyday physics calculations that it has to be my number one! (By the way, are you taught that F=ma, or are you taught that F = Delta p / Delta t ? Or both? Just curious; they're the same thing, but F=ma is usually taught in H.S., whereas the second concept is actually what Newton first wrote down...)

Favorite movies?? Well, I see and like a lot of movies, and I like all the ones you mentioned, except I haven't seen 7 Pounds. I have two kids, a daughter and a son -- they keep me pretty up-to-date on movies and such. They're both in college now. They both took physics -- my daughter did well in it (she's great at math!) and my son didn't like it so much. They're now studying business and emergency medicine.

-Mike

Adopt-a-Physicist almost over...

2010-02-07T21:07:00.000-06:00

Oct 20 1:41PM - Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class! WSHS
19 Posts
Wow! You've been to a lot of places, that seems cool. But we were wondering what could you possibily do in those different places related to physics?   We were also wondering what TV shows you watched?  D likes Gossip Girl and Greek.  A watches How I Met Your Mother and Psych.  A2 enjoys 90210 and also Gossip Girl.  K also watches How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory.   Do you watch any of these?   Your fellow phyicist.

Reply:
Hi all,

As you might imagine, every country has its series of universities and, often times, their own national laboratories. So, some of my travels are to visit those labs and schools. And then, when people want to get together for a conference or a meeting, it is often chosen to be in a big city near a university or a lab. So that's how I manage to travel to all these places.

As for the TV shows; I really feel old. I don't believe I've ever watched any of those programs. I guess I'm more into Fringe, PBS Mystery shows, Law and Order, and news shows and sports and occasionally the Simpsons...
-Mike

Oct 21 9:36AM - lots of flying junk
24 Posts

So you work with particle accelerators and i was wondering when the large hadron collider was going to be online again? and what does your company really do? 

Reply:
Hi,
The LHC is scheduled to turn back on sometime the middle of next month, in about 3 weeks or so from now.

As for where I work, Fermilab is a U.S. National Laboratory run by the U.S. Department of Energy. We have almost a dozen particle accelerators here, the largest of which is the Tevatron which is the most powerful accelerator in the world. At least it will be until the LHC comes on and surpasses us. (We've held the record for over 25 years!) So, we use these accelerators to give particles -- mostly protons -- very high energies and then smash them into each other to try to unravel the building blocks of nature and reveal how everything in the physical world is composed and how they behave.
-Mike

Fav Scientist

2010-02-06T16:15:00.005-06:00

Oct 22 12:38PM - Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!
23 Posts
We've heard about Law and Order, it's a pretty good show. What exactly does your particle accelerator do? What would you suggest to make to launch a pumpkin. Would you use a sling shot or a catapolt? We just started a unit on Newton's laws. What's you favorite scientist? Hope to hear from you soon! 
Your fellow physicists

Reply:
Hi WSHS:
The "accelerator" I work on uses electric fields to attract and accelerate charged particles -- mostly protons -- giving them more and more energy and speeding them up closer and closer to the speed of light. We use powerful electromagnets to steer the particles around in a circle so that they can pass through the electric fields again to gain more energy. After they've gone around a few million times, they have "seen" a total of about 1000 Million volts (or 1 Teravolts) of voltage. We say that they have an energy of one TeV (Tera-electron Volts; even though they are protons and not electrons...). So, the machine is called the Tevatron. It's the world's most powerful accelerator, and has been for over 25 years. A new machine coming on-line in Switzerland and France (it's so big it goes across the boundaries of these two countries!) will soon take over as "number one." It will go to 7 TeV energies. Anyway, you can see a picture of the Tevatron here:

(It's the biggest ring in the picture -- 4 miles around!) and our lab's web site (the second web site ever made in the U.S.!!) is here: http://www.fnal.gov .

OK, so for a pumpkin accelerator, I'd probably use a sling shot. I suspect that there are many good rubbery slings out there which would be easy to get and that would be much more reliable than a catapult contraption that you'd have to build from scratch. Just my thoughts, but I don't have much experience accelerating large, uncharged objects... ;-)

And, as for my favorite scientist? Newton and Einstein always come to mind. However, I have always like a guy named James Clerk Maxwell. You'll learn about him probably much later in the year. But he did a LOT of things, including the final synthesis that showed the world how light, electricity, and magnetism are all related. He also showed (using pure logic, pen and paper) that the rings of Saturn could not be solid objects -- that they must be made up of broken up rocks or small particles of some sort. It was really quite an amazing thing to calculate and convince people back in the mid-1800's. He won a prize and became famous by that calculation. He did a lot of other things, too, but those are what I remember about him, and I always thought he was a cool dude.

-Mike

Golden Accelerator

2010-02-05T16:14:00.002-06:00

Oct 19 3:24PM - Particle Accelerator Letdown.
14 Posts
Oh darn...there go our plans to blow up the Vatican.  Dr. Syphers, reading your profile, I was wondering...what exactly do you accomplish by accelerating gold nuclei and colliding them together? And what first attracted you to the field of physics?  ~A

Reply:
Hi,
Gold atoms are made up of 79 electrons around a nucleus of 79 protons and neutrons. Actually, its only stable isotope is 197Au, which means there are 79 protons and 118 neutrons in the nucleus! Since each proton and neutron are composed of smaller particles -- called quarks -- then there's a good chance of making "quark soup" when we collide gold nuclei. So, we strip away all of the electrons and accelerate the positively charged nuclei alone to try to generate a "sea" of quarks and gluons, at densities that likely haven't happened in nature since the time of the Big Bang. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_gluon_plasma

As for my humble beginnings, it really started for me at a young age when I became interested in the stars and planets.
-Mike

Oct 19 3:27PM - Fermilab
14 Posts
Hey! In reading your profile I was wondering what exactly a fermilab is. Also, what are y'all planning on doing with the Tevatron in two years once you close it down?  ~S

Reply:
Hi S,
The term "fermilab" is just short for the laboratory where I work: the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. It's web site is: http://www.fnal.gov , in case you haven't seen it yet. Enrico Fermi was a famous physicist from the University of Chicago in the 1930-40's. He and his group were the first to generate sustainable nuclear energy from radioactive atomic nuclei and our lab is named after him.

We're still debating what to do once the Tevatron turns off. We might use it to do some different types of experiments. For instance, rather than collide beams together head on, we might use it to accelerate beams of particles and then direct them into stationary targets. We've done this before, and there are certain experiments that work well that way. Or, we might just shut it down and use the tunnel to build some different type of accelerator in the future, though we don't have a design for this use quite yet. Our budget will help determine if we can afford to keep it running, as will the various merits of the experiments that are dreamed up to use it.

-Mike

Oct 19 3:28PM - B's blog
14 Posts
How much do you get paid and what exactly does your job entail in a given day? (and by this, I mean, should I enter that field of study?)  Thanks!  ~B

Reply:
Hi B,
Personally, I think it's a great field of study. There are many uses of accelerators out there, not just for studying quarks and neutrinos, but also for medicine and industry and other uses.
Typically my day consists of many meetings, some work in our Control Room (where we run the accelerators) and sometimes I'm lucky and get to do some calculations and studies using the accelerators. But, I've been in the field for a while now; when I was younger it was less meetings and more "science." But that's OK; that's how it works. I get to travel a lot around the country and the world, have 5 weeks of vacation a year (plus holidays, etc.), and get to work with the coolest equipment, meet top scientists in all kinds of fields, have flexible work hours -- and it's just plain fun for me (most of the time). Oh, and a typical scientist at my level at Fermilab makes between 85K and 170K; I'm in the middle of that range somewhere.
-Mike

From our awesome Physics class!

2010-02-04T16:13:00.001-06:00

From our awesome Physics class! - Oct 13 1:13PM
5 Posts
Hello Dr. Syphers! Anyways we are interested in hearing more about your job and if you could please explain in more details what the accelarator is for. What is a typical day at the Fermilab? What other areas do you dabble in?   p.s. any chance you can help us with a project we have?

Reply:
Hi WSHS!
Anyway, the accelerator at Fermilab is used to smash particles together to see what happens in an attempt to understand the most basic building blocks of matter and energy, and to learn more about how the universe works. You can see much more about it at: http://www.fnal.gov
Typically my day consists of many meetings, some work in our Control Room (where we run the accelerators) and sometimes I'm lucky and get to do some calculations and studies using the accelerators. Besides particle acceleration, I also like to study astrophysics; it was astronomy that really got me interested in science at at young age.
Cheers,
-Mike

p.s. -- when you say "help us with a project," exactly what did you have in mind?

Oct 14 2:26PM - Re: Re: Re: Introduction
5 Posts
Mike,   Our High School is also very small and we're lucky their has not been a situation like that in our school.    How is it like interacting with your students that choose to work at Fermilab with you? What are they able to do sense they have yet to graduate from collage? Is it like an internship for the students?   Thank you for at the least, the link about dark matter. It's helpful but also lead to more questions about Fermilab. What is your position there, and do you have any involvement with cryogenics?  -BHS honors class

Reply:

Hi,
I have worked with college students, graduate school students, and even some high school students here at our laboratory. In general, the high school students have had "internships" where they visited here for a day every week or two during the school year (2 or 3 have done that with me over the years) or else they worked here over the summer for several weeks (5-10 students have worked with me that way). Obviously, they were from a local high school within easy driving distance to the lab. The college students (3 or 4) have been here for summer internships in-between school years. Graduate students are typically working on their PhD degrees, and are usually here full-time by the time they work with me. I've had about 4 of those students overall.

We can usually find some interesting work for students to do, from helping to build apparatus for an experiment, or do computer programming, or using existing programs to help sift through data, make plots, etc. We had a series of students over the past few summers work here helping to locate "gravitational lenses" in photographs taken with a large telescope in New Mexico that Fermilab helped to build.

My position is "Scientist" at Fermilab, and I mostly work on large particle accelerators -- their design, construction, operation, fine-tuning. Our largest accelerator -- the Tevatron -- is made up of electromagnets that have superconducting coils. These coils are cooled to cryogenic temperatures -- 4 degrees above Absolute Zero! -- where they lose all of their electrical resistance and hence operate with essentially no power loss. So, I don' myself do any cryogenic engineering, but I do use cryogenic equipment a lot.

-Mike

Adopt-a-Physicist Fall 2009 Physicists

2010-02-03T16:13:00.002-06:00

Forum: Adopt-a-Physicist Fall 2009 Physicists
Thread: Michael Syphers
Title: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!
- - -

Hey Michael,
Wow, that sounds like a wonderful day!! Those calculations must get pretty tricky from time to time. But, is it possible that your researching the string theory at all because K would like to know. She finds that quite interesting as well!!!!! A now wants to know what else do you do? And A2 wants to know how you got into astronomy. What made you like it at such a young age? If theres any other interesting information feel free to let us know!

Your fellow physicists...

p.s. when i say project...i mean pumpkin launcher!

- - -

Reply:

Hi Guys!

K: I, personally, am not working on String Theory, but I agree that it sounds very intriguing! Of course, as a scientist, I want to see any theory make a prediction that we can test with an experiment, and as far as I know String Theory hasn't come up with such a test -- yet! But maybe it will!

A: I like photography and tennis and bicycling, though I did a lot more of all of those things when I was younger. I also enjoy traveling, which I get to do once in a while in my work.

A2: I think it was partially the Apollo space program that was going on when I was a kid that got me thinking about astronomy. Plus, the fact that I could actually see stars from my backyard. (Not so easy to do in most places these days!) My older sister bought me a book and a star chart, and then I was hooked!

-Mike

WSHS responded to Mike Syphers's post ('Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!') with the following comment on Oct 16, 2009 at 12:28 PM EST

Forum: Adopt-a-Physicist Fall 2009 Physicists
Thread: Michael Syphers
Title: Re: Re: Re: Re: From our awesome Physics class!
- - -

Hey Michael, its your fellow physicists!!

We are just finishing up our topic on projectiles and now getting ready to do our pumpkin launch. Do you have any structural ideas or designs that would give us the best results to launch our pumpkin as far as possible.

We remembered you said you traveled to various places, we would like to tell you our favorite place we traveled.

D went to the Carribean
A2 went to Seabrook island in south carolina
K went to rome
A went to bahamas.

Where is your favorite place you have traveled to?

Your friends,

Reply:

Hi,

I haven't launched many pumpkins; but, remember: 45 degrees! (neglecting air friction, of course)

I've traveled quite a bit in my work. I've been all around the country, to Europe many times, and to Russia (Moscow, and Siberia). It's really hard to pick a favorite; I probably have favorites for different reasons. I really like the mountains, so Colorado is great, as are the Swiss Alps. For beaches, Puerto Rico is hard to beat, and Barbados and Aruba. But the beaches on the East Coast -- just for walking along and thinking -- are great, too. (The Hamptons in New York come to mind...)

In Europe, one of my favorite cities was Amsterdam, and I really enjoyed Paris, too, though most people weren't as friendly as in Amsterdam.

Have a great weekend!
-Mike

Adopted Again

2010-02-02T12:39:00.001-06:00

Last Fall I ran a blog/discussion with three high school physics classes through the Adopt-A-Physicist program sponsored by Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society, with aid from the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers. The next few blog entries will be posts from that discussion. Names of students and institutions have been edited for privacy, but the content is original.

+++++++++++++++++++++++
Introduction - Oct 12 10:33AM Mike Syphers
66 Posts

Hello, thank you for adopting me in the Adopt-a-Physicist program.  To get an idea of who I am, you can view my profile.

-Mike Syphers

Particle Accelerators - Oct 12 3:22PM
4 Posts
Hello Dr. Syphers! We are three students from a high school in Wisconsin. Dr. Syphers, have you ever read the book Angels and Demons? It talks about particle accelerators. I was wondering, is Dan's description of these up-to-date? Did he exaggerate any of these details? Or, on the other hand, have there been advances in this field since he published this book?

Reply:
Hi!
Happy to hear from you! Yes, I've read Angels and Demons -- and saw the movie, too. I've also been to CERN, where the particle accelerator from the book is located. First of all, let me remind you that one purchases that book in the Fiction section of the bookstore(!). Dan's books have been very exciting to read (at least for me), but they have about as much fiction as what appears to be fact. As for the accelerator, there really is an "LHC" at CERN, though it hasn't successfully turned on yet. It also will not be used to make antimatter in any large quantities, so that's part of the fiction. The greatest exaggeration in the story is that the LHC would produce enough antimatter to generate a large explosion, which is hogwash. Here at Fermilab, we make more antimatter (antiprotons, to be specific) than any place on earth in our accelerators. If the Fermilab machines were used to make antiprotons at our full capacity, it would take about 500,000,000 years to make a gram of antiprotons. (Wouldn't have to worry about job security, eh?)
But, the cool thing is that antimatter does exist, we can make it, it does annihilate with regular matter to form pure energy, and we at Fermilab do collide protons with antiprotons to look at the particles that get created from this energy. We do it every day. And that's not science fiction! But if you told everyone that it was enough energy to light up a 4 Watt light bulb, you wouldn't sell all that many books...

Cheers,
-Mike

Re: Introduction - Oct 13 1:42PM
3 Posts
Hello Mr. Syphers,   Greetings from New Jersey. Thank you for being one of our physicist's! We are very excited to have you. We here at our tiny little school are aware that you tought high school for only one year. What made you change your job? Do you miss it? Also at Fermilab was there a project which was set up for detecting dark matter that was passing through extremely cold plates in a chamber? If so did you work on it and did you discover anything?

Reply:
Hi BHS!
My H.S. teaching job was my first job out of college. I really enjoyed it, but it was a tough time for teachers at that school. It was a small school near Chicago, and there was a "tax referendum" that was voted on by the community, and they voted not to raise taxes for the school. SO, the school district laid off all of the first-year teachers. Oh well... BUT, there was a job opening just down the street at Fermilab, so I applied and got the job. The rest is ... history.
But, I never really got away from teaching. I learned my job and taught what I learned to others below me, and then I went back to college for my MS and PhD degrees. Since then, I've taught college courses quite a bit, and had many students work with me at Fermilab. So, it's still been very rewarding and teaching continues to be a big part of my life. (Like, Adopt-A-Physicist!)
As for the Dark Matter search, I personally did not work on that experiment. You can find more about it (if you haven't already) at: http://ppd.fnal.gov/experiments/cdms/
Best,
-Mike

Simulating Gravity -- Part II: Let's go to Mars

2010-01-16T23:00:00.001-06:00

Following up from last time (if you remember, last time -- it's been a LONG time), how would one send a rocket ship off on a trip to Mars from the Earth, with the minimum amount of energy being used in the process?

Think of the problem this way. First, as usual, one makes some "simplifying assumptions." Assume that the Earth and Mars are both in circular orbits about the Sun. Not too bad an assumption for this purpose, actually. So, what trajectory would we like our spaceship to take? We'd like for it to undergo an elliptical orbit about the Sun, an orbit which tangentially intersects both the orbit of the Earth and the orbit of Mars. For reference, let Earth's orbit have a radius of be 1 A.U. from the Sun; then Mars' orbit has a radius of 1.52 A.U.

Imagine firing the rocket's engine until it attains a velocity v_0 that is oriented tangent to the Earth's orbit. Then the engine is turned off, and the rocket will begin to orbit the Sun in an elliptical orbit. Using the spreadsheet from last time, one could adjust v_0 and plot the orbit that results; for some particular value of v_0, the new elliptical orbit will extend out to the orbit of Mars. An example of a solution is shown in the Figure below:

To arrive at this figure, I manually adjusted v_0 in the spreadsheet we used last time (PlanetOrb.xls ). Starting with the condtions

x=0, y=-1, vx=v_0, and vy=0

I varied v_0 until I got the desired result. I found that v_0 = 2*pi * 1.098 = 6.899 works pretty well.

To check, how would we calculate the required speed?

As usual, we employ the laws of conservation of energy and momentum to arrive at the formula:

v_0^2 = 2 GM / r0 / ( 1 + r0/r)

where r0 is the radius of the Earth's orbit, and r is the radius of Mars' orbit. Plugging in numbers you should find that v_0 is in very good agreement with what was found with the spreadhseet.

Now that we can compute the required speed of the rocket, the remaining question is "When do we fire the engines?" If we launch the rocket when the earth is at x=0, y=-1, as in the above graph, then we want Mars to be at x=0 and y = +1.52 when the rocket arrives at that point! So, that means there is a particular time at which the launch needs to take place. This is why rockets cannot be launched on their space missions at just any 'ole time. By looking at our spreadsheet calculation, I find that the rocket reaches the desired coordinates somewhere around time t = 0.710 and 0.725. That is, in about eight and a half months. (Remember, t is in Years in our spreadsheet.) This also tells us that there is a bit of a "launch window" of opportunity for setting off our rocket. Much outside of that time window, and the rocket and Mars will not meet up.

So, the rocket must be launched at a specific time, such that after its 8.5 month journey, Mars ends up opposite the sun from where the Earth was located at launch time. And all of this can be readily estimated using a spreadsheet program, using the definitions of velocity and acceleration, and application of Newton's Universal Law of Gravtiation.

Simulating Gravity -- Part I: Some Basics

2009-08-21T19:52:00.009-05:00

There are many canned programs out there in the marketplace that teachers can download and use to illustrate physics problems or principles, such as projectile motion. But what do the students learn from this? They play games all day long and never realize that the reason that their "characters" move about and jump over canyons along (hopefully) parabolic trajectories is because someone programmed in that detail of the motion into the software. So, let's have the students do that themselves!

Many programming environments are freely (or easily) available in which examples can be built up using first principles learned in the classroom; let the students “see for themselves” the laws of physics in use. For example, spreadsheet programs, like Excel, Numbers, Lotus, etc. (and their variants), make it easy for values of one 'cell' to be computed based upon the numbers input into previous cells. Editing features, like copying formulas from a line of cells into the cells in the line directly below, are easy and ideal for generating iterative calculations.

Let's look at an example...

Consider the motion of a particle undergoing free fall. Make a table, such as shown here. Starting with some "initial conditions" (x,y, etc. at time t=0), compute the values at subsequent times by calculating x, vx, etc. after a time dt, as indicated.

Next, create such a table in Excel (say) and let the program do the work...

An example Excel spreadsheet can be found here ( FreeFall.xls ).

By selecting the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) position numbers you want to plot, one can typically have the program make a grap, and voila!:

Here is a picture of what one would see in Excel:

So, the students not only see the result (hopefully, a parabolic trajectory!), but they see that it's simply the application of some simple relationships that they learned in class and can easily remember -- dv = a dt, dx = v dt, and so forth. One can explain how "dt" needs to be chosen to be small enough to make it a smooth, "continuous" variable, and so forth. (In fact, make dt too large, and see what happens!)

There is so much that can be learned and discussed from this simple exercise; plus, the students will learn a basic skill -- how to use a spreadsheet program to do more than balance a checkbook (do students even do THAT anymore?); a skill that they can use in college and beyond.

Once you get this far, it's a simple matter to extend the concept to a more complicated situation, but one which is still easily performed by the student -- let's try a planetary orbit around the sun! We're actually most of the way to being able to do this calculation using the spreadsheet we developed above. All we need to do is to modify the cells that contain the acceleration -- that is, modify our description of the force acting on the particle (planet, or satellite in this case).

The figure below provides a way of seeing the relationships, and the x and y accelerations can be easily computed from Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation:

Rather than using MKS units (meters, kilograms, seconds), it might be easiest to use units of "astronomical units" (average distance from earth to the sun), solar mass, and years (AU, Msol, yr). In this case, Newton's constant becomes:

G = (2 pi)^2 (AU^3)/(yr^2 Msol) = 39.4784 (AU^3)/(yr^2 Msol)

[It's easiest to see this if you consider purely circular motion of a planet around the sun.]

So, we input these relations into our "cells" that describe particle acceleration, and -- instantly -- the spreadsheet gives a plot of the result (see the file: PlanetOrb.xls ):

To start with, have the particle begin on a circular path. (This is the default condition in the spreadsheet.) How did we guess our initial conditions? By our choice of units they're simply:

x0 = 1 AU, y0 = 0 AU; vx0 = 0 AU/yr, vy0 = 2 pi AU/yr -- try it out!

Next, try the following:

x0 = 2 AU, y0 = 0 AU; vx0 = 0 AU/yr, vy0 = 1 pi AU/yr -- did you get an ellipse?

How about:

x0 = -25 AU, y0 = 3 AU; vx0 = 5 AU/yr, vy0 = 0 pi AU/yr -- did you get a hyperbola?

Lastly (for today), can you use the spreadsheet to estimate the escape velocity from the earth's orbit?

ANS: "Launch" a particle from a distance of 1 AU. Start out with a speed of 2 AU/yr, and plot x vs. t. Do you see the particle "turn around"? Gradually try increasing initial speeds until the particle appears to fly off "forever" (always increase x with time). What minimum speed is required to "escape"?
Try:

x0 = 1 AU, y0 = 0 AU; vx0 = 2 AU/yr, vy0 = 0 AU/yr
how far does the particle get before it "turns around"?
next, increase vx0 to 3 AU/yr, 4 AU/yr, etc.; how far now?

what should the answer be?
... compare with v_esc = sqrt( 2GM/R)!

The above exercises could easily be broken up into about 2 class periods or more, depending upon how far the teacher wants to take this, what questions are answered, etc. But next time we'll take what we've learned and try to analyze a more specific problem.

Coming up: Let's program our computer to calculate a "trip to Mars"!
We can do this!

[Speaking of Mars: what's up with these emails about Mars' closest approach, and being "as big as a full moon," and not happening again for "5000, maybe 17,000 years"?? I see these posts every year (since the real "closest approach" that happened in 2003, and won't happen again until 2020). And the latest one says that Mars will appear as big "as the full moon"! What bunk!]

Helping Teach Teachers Teach Physics

2009-07-10T22:24:00.018-05:00

Over the past few years while working with high school teachers at Fermilab, and also watching my kids go through physics classes at their own high schools, I found that too often kids were being taught "which equations to use when", rather than the principles behind those equations. I remember one teacher was having my stepson's class recite three mnemonics that would help them to remember which equation to use when faced with a problem regarding two-body problems where the bodies traveled in a straight line. One equation was for when the two bodies were both initially in motion. One equation was for when one of the bodies was initially at rest. And the third equation was for when the two bodies "stuck together" after the collision. My son was having trouble remembering "which" to use "when".

I tried to teach my son that there was really only one equation that needed remembering -- the momentum before the collision was equal to the momentum after the collision. Then, you just have to modify this statement to illustrate the problem at hand, and solve it algebraically. He liked that approach, but when he tried it on a quiz he got the problem wrong because he didn't "use the right equation; remember the mnemonics!!!" He never really liked physics, and didn't do too well; but then I found out that the teacher was a well-qualified biology teacher who recently was assigned to teach physics, a subject that she had taken, once, many years ago...

This, of course, is a situation found all over the country. Teachers are "teaching" physics because they had a course in it during college, or ... perhaps not. The fact that they are a science or math teacher, or maybe just had a math course, often means that they are qualified to teach physics to high school seniors contemplating college and their future careers. It's true, I believe, that a smart, motivated kid will find ways to learn what he or she wants to learn, but a really qualified teacher showing the excitement of physics and its usefulness in everyday life, especially the true underlying meaning of all of those "problems" kids are asked to solve should not be substituted by rote memorization of frivolous (to the students if not to the teacher) phrases.

Certainly a great part of the blame in all this lies in the fact that teaching for a while now has no longer been seen as a respectable career, and those who are actually good at it and can do well at it are enticed to move on to "more meaningful" work, like making money for a corporation. If a person knows enough physics to really teach it well to high school students, then they know enough to work for a company or lab, where they can receive salaries 2-3 times or more than a teacher's salary, and receive benefits that cannot be found in the teaching sector (including education reimbursement -- remember, teachers need more education to move up the scale!). They may feel motivated right out of college to go ahead and teach "for the better good," but such science teachers quickly burn out as they see their college friends moving quickly ahead (whatever that means) in life.

This is not something that can be changed overnight. Even though the present presidential administration recognizes the need for stronger educational practices, and stronger scientific education in the country, one cannot just lay off all the unqualified teachers and replace them with new "qualified" teachers. Firstly, the teachers we have today -- though some may not know the subject they teach as well as they would like -- still may have many years of experience in the classroom which is vitally important to any successful program and which the "new" teachers won't immediately have. Secondly, there aren't enough "new" teachers who are trained, readily equipped and who have the desire to change their present careers and go into teaching for such an overhaul to happen over night.

Present teachers, those who are willing to learn and adapt and wish to provide the best education to the students, should be provided special training to better prepare them to teach in the modern physics classroom. There are physicists in this country (one immediately comes to mind) that would truly enjoy spending part of their time for, say, a semester or two, re-teaching high school physics to high school teachers who will potentially need to teach physics. That is, have the scientist show the teachers how THEY would get the points across to students; show them how to use the equipment they find lying around in the back room of the high school science department. Show them how to teach using their own self-made apparatus when the back room doesn't have any equipment lying around! Show the teachers how they, the scientists, approach solving problems (at the high school level). I think the results would be very surprising. Most physicists don't simply recall a mnemonic device that helps them remember which equation to use -- they solve problems like puzzles, starting from basic principles and applying logic. One of the reasons I did so well in physics was that I didn't have to memorize as much as I would have had to in other subjects. (Biology comes to mind...)

Most scientists that I know tell me that there was a teacher or two in their early years that greatly influenced them, their thinking, and their desire to become scientists. If present-day teachers could hear from some of these scientists to learn what sparked them at age 16, then this could be a wealth of information for the teachers to use in their classrooms.

Next time, I'd like to discuss how one can use "everyday" software to use a computer to solve seemingly complicated physics problems using high school physics. I'll ultimately share a problem that I had to work out as a senior in college. How would that possibly be of interest at the high school level? Well, in my college days, computers were main frames that took up entire basements of physics and math buildings, typing out "punch cards" and feeding them into a card reader; I had to use one to solve this problem (actually, part of this problem -- the part I will share next time). Today, kids play video games in THEIR basements on computers that have 100,000 times the power of the one I used in the 1970's. But, while they use the computers as game devices, they don't often realize that they can program the computer themselves to solve problems like calculating trajectories to send a space probe to Mars, or simulating the motion of stars near the center of the galaxy. It's all just Newton's laws, which they learn in high school, and they have all they power they need to "solve the problem -- no mnemonics required!"

Angels and Demons

2009-07-03T19:13:00.011-05:00

Even though the movie has been out for a while now, I still receive questions from visitors to Fermilab about our production of antimatter, and whether there is any "validity" in the premise that a "bomb" could be produced using our supply, or the supply that the movie suggests will be generated by the LHC at CERN.

Besides the slight change in the ending (the movie's ending is much better than that in the book!), it was great to see some actual views of CERN and the LHC tunnel in the movie "Angels and Demons". One has to realize that the "control" of the accelerator is not underground nor just outside of the detector, but rather several kilometers away in an above-ground building. And the accelerator operators don't wear lab coats. And... But, the film has enough going for it to make it interesting. What's also interesting, which most people know by now, is that (a) the LHC at CERN will not be used to make antimatter, except as a result of individual particle collisions in the experiments, and (b) even if it were optimized to make antiparticles at an appreciable rate, it would take far too long to get the amount presented in the movie.

Let's make a simple calculation, using the highest antimatter production going on in the world today, the Fermilab Antiproton Source. At Fermilab, beams of protons are accelerated within several stages of accelerators to a final energy of 120 GeV per proton -- that means that each proton is accelerated through a net voltage of 120 Billion volts. The beam of protons is focused and sent into a target made of a Nickel alloy, where the energy of the collisions of the protons with the nuclei of the target is high enough that new particles can be created (E = mc^2). Any particles with a negative charge, and with a momentum of 8.9 GeV/c are collected in a storage ring that is made up of electromagnets and tuned to operate for that particular momentum. Many of those particles, like pions and kaons, etc., will very quickly decay away -- however, stable particles -- like antiprotons -- will remain forever (as far as we know) and can be collected in the ring. In the Fermilab facility, about 20 antiprotons with this particular momentum are collected for every one million (10^6) protons that hit the target.

Now, the facility can produce about 8 trillion (8 x 10^12) protons each with 120 GeV energy every 2.2 seconds to send to the target. That means that 8 x 10^12 x 20/10^6 = 160 x 10^6 antiprotons are produced every 2.2 sec. OR, 0.16 x 10^9 /2.2 s x 3600 s / hr = 26 x 10^10 antiprotons every hour (260 billion/hr).

Thus, if the facility ran non-stop (present conditions generate an effective "up-time" of about 70% throughout a typical year), for 1 billion years, then roughly 26 x 10^10 /hr x 24 hr/day x 365.24 days/ year x 10^9 (1 billion) years x 0.70 = 1.6 x 10^24 antiprotons would be generated.

Coincidentally, the mass of an antiproton is the same as the mass of a proton: 1.6 x 10^-24 gram. Thus, in a BILLION YEARS of running, we could produce *** 1 gram *** of antimatter!

OK, so the 1/4 gram of antimatter that goes "missing" in the movie would only take 250,000,000 years to generate...

"Yes, but couldn't we upgrade the Fermilab accelerator to do better?"

Indeed, if the targeting stations were upgraded, and we could use the full power of the "Main Injector" accelerator (which operates at 120 GeV/proton), then one could imagine 4 x 10^13 every 1.5 seconds at best -- a rate that would be 40/8 x 2.2/1.5 = 7 times better. THUS, it could generate 1/4 gram in "only" about 36 million years!

The other question often asked is, "Isn't the LHC much higher energy? So couldn't it make antimatter that much faster?"

First of all, the LHC can't ramp up and down in 2.2 seconds or anything close to that. It takes many minutes for the accelerator to reach full energy. So, even if it does have over 50 times the energy of the Fermilab Main Injector (it will contain, ultimately, roughly the same number of particles), it takes about 500 times longer to ramp up and down to its final energy. So, the "rate" that it could produce antiprotons is far less than what would be done at Fermlab's machine.

- - -

It's still cool that antimatter exists at all. And, that most of the antimatter produced and accumulated for scientific use in the world so far has been produced right outside of Chicago...

Aerial view of part of the Fermilab accelerator complex. The "oval"-shaped accelerator at the top is the Main Injector, which typically operates at 120 GeV per proton. The small "triangular" arrangement of buildings near the bottom house equipment for the Antiproton Source, located about 20 feet below the surface.

Thanks, A-a-P groups!

2009-06-19T20:54:00.001-05:00

Dr. Syphers,

I would like to use this post to thank you and all of the physicists that took time out to respond to our posts. I would aslo like to thank you for being an inspiration to me and my fellow classmates.

- - -

Hi everyone,

I wanted to thank you for participating in Adopt-a-Physicist. It has been a lot of fun answering your questions and talking physics, astronomy, basketball, and work with all of you. Have a great end-of-the-year, and a great summer.

I have posted past entries on my blog site ( http://SyPhy.com ) and may post some of our discussions there, too, for others to gain insights. Feel free to visit me there.

Thanks again,
-Mike Syphers

- - -

Dr. Syphers,
Thanks for all your help. I learned a lot about the fermilab, tevatron, and particle accelerators in general. I enjoyed talking to you the past couple weeks, and you helped get a better understanding of physics, the higgs particle, and many other things.
Thanks,
Ryan D

Sound's Interesting...

2009-06-12T19:13:00.001-05:00

My name is Branden and Im currnetly a senior. My question for you is do you work with sound waves.

- - -

Hi Branden,
I don't actually work with sound waves in my job. I do enjoy using my iPod, though...
Cheers,
-Mike

Growing Up...

2009-06-05T18:44:00.001-05:00

Hello Dr. Syphers,
I was wondering if you were raised in a scientific enviornment. Were many of the people around you interested in science, or was there just something about it you liked?
Are there any youtube videos you know of that illustrate the concepts you are interested in?
Ryan D.
PS How do you feel about pluto not being considered a planet anymore?

---

Hi Ryan,

No, I was not raised in a scientific environment. My oldest sister and I were the first in my family to go to college. But our parents were very loving and caring and taught all of us kids (5 in all) that we could be and do anything we wanted if we worked hard at it. And that's what we all did.

Why science? From a very young age, maybe 6 or 7, I would stare at the stars in the sky and wonder what they were and how to get up there and why did they move around and what was the sun and the mooon and ... I really didn't know anyone else who was interested in science until I got into high school and took chemistry and physics. When I saw a physics book and learned that this science could explain the motion of the planets -- 10 years after I first started thinking about it! -- then I was hooked on physics.

I'm not all that familiar with the YouTube site, though I go there when other people give me links. There's one video I saw recently about one of the particle detectors we use here at Fermilab:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPIbjQ_JRk4
Here's one I found that talks about particle accelerators; it looks pretty good, and shows pictures of Fermilab:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_jIcDOkTAY

Hope that's helpful.

Oh, and feel sorry for little Pluto...

Cheers,
-Mike

-------

Hi again, Ryan:

CERN is a laboratory on the border of Switzerland and France, near Geneva. I has been the long-time (friendly) rival to Fermilab. For 25 years, Fermilab has held the record for particle energies, with our proton beams in the Tevatron accelerator. In a year or so, CERN's new accelerator -- the LHC -- will be several times stronger (about 5-7 times). It's a very similar machine as the Tevatron, only bigger.

When we collide particles in the Tevatron (or LHC for that matter), we observe all of the bi-products of the collisions. There are certain statistical chances -- that can be calculated from theory -- as to what should happen and how often. The data is taken and analyzed to see if the theories we have match up with what we observe. The energy from the particle collisions creates new particles, many of which have not been created since the Big Bang! So, they are very rare events, and we hope that we can find evidence for a new particle -- the Higgs particle -- that is the missing link. The theories we have today predict that it should exist and if it does we expect to see it a few times if we take enough data.

I'm content working at Fermilab; I enjoy the midwest, and Chicago is a wonderful city. I do wish the SSC had not been canceled, however, as it was a major set-back for our country to stop such an important project.

Thanks,
-Mike

- - -

Fermilab

2009-05-29T19:37:00.001-05:00

hello! my name is Grace. I noticed your forum avatar (profile picture?) it's an interesting symbol and i don't think i've seen it before. what does the symbol mean. what does it represent?

- - -

Hi Grace!

The avatar is actually the official logo of the laboratory where I work -- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. It actually does have a story. The laboratory houses the world's most powerful particle accelerator, or "atom smasher." This machine guides charged particles (protons and antiprotons) around in a circular path, and eventually smashes them into each other to see what happens. The accelerator has about 1000 very powerful electromagnets in it. Some of the electromagnets (about 780 of them) are used simply to steer the beam in its circular path. The other large magnets (about 220 of them) are used to keep the beam of particles "focused" around this path.

I've attached a figure to look at now. The picture shows three different kinds of electromagnets used in accelerators. The first one on the left has four "poles", and is represented by the four curved lines in the avatar. The second one has two poles (up and down) -- the magnetic field lines go from bottom (North pole) to top (South pole) inside the hole in the center. The two horizontal lines in the avatar represent this "dipole" design.

Anyway, Fermilab was the first lab whose accelerator was made out of a combination of dipole-style magnets and quadrupole-style magnets. So that is why it this logo was chosen for the laboratory.

You can visit the Fermilab web site at: http://www.fnal.gov where the logo is used quite a lot!

Thanks,

- - -

I just picked you for my physicist for our project and I was interested to hear how you liked working at Fermilab

-----

Hi,
I enjoy working there very much. It is a very exciting place to be, with people from all over the world coming together to study the physical world. You can get a lot of information about the lab at our web page: http://www.fnal.gov . As you might notice, it has a lot of interesting architecture, wildlife, cool "toys" to play with, and great people. It's really a nice life, I'd have to say.

Thanks for your question!

Career Choices...

2009-05-22T21:16:00.001-05:00

Hello Dr. Syphers,
Was there a time when you didn't want to be a physicist as your career or have you always had that being your primary interest?

~Amanda

-------

Hi Amanda,

I think I became interested in science at a very young age -- probably around 6 or 7 years old. It was during the 1960's, and the "space race" was on. I became very interested in the stars and planets, and started learning to recognize constellations, etc., and looking at Jupiter's moons through binoculars, and stuff like that. I didn't even know what physics was until I was a Junior in high school -- but when I saw the book I saw the chapter on "Gravity" and I was hooked!! And I've been studying, practicing, and teaching physics ever since.

Other things I was interested in during my teens, and briefly considered studying for a career, were drafting, architecture, and journalism. But science was always there, calling me back...

Thanks for your question!

- - -
Right now we are learning about wavelengths and frequencies for light and sound. We are applying it to mirrors and reflection and refraction.

We understand that you work for Fermilab. What does your job entail?

- - -
Hi,

I'm an accelerator scientist at the lab. I work on the design, operation, and troubleshooting of large particle accelerators. I've been in the business for a while now, so I do quite a bit of administrative work (meetings, writing reports, etc.), but I'm still able to work on real science once in a while, too! I probably do more calculations and computer work than hands-on experimentation, but I always try to do a little of each.

Are there more specific things you'd like to know about my job?

Thanks for your question,
-Mike

-------

Dear Dr. Syphers,

Hello, my name is Myles F. Thank you for participating in the adopt a physicist program. My group looks forward to talking with you and researching you for furhter information. I guess the best question to start off with is, how and when did you fall in love with physics?

Thank You,

Myles F.

-------
Hi Myles, et al.:

I became very interested in science at a young age -- probably around 6 or 7. I was fascinated by the stars and planets (the Apollo space program was going on around then) and read everything I could about them. My parents bought me a small (and cheap!) telescope back then, and I used it all the time to look at the moon, jupiter, etc. I learned all the constellations visible to me, and the names of the brightest stars, and so forth. So, that's really when it all started.

I took biology as a freshman in high school, and chemistry as a sophomore. The next science class to take was something called "physics," though I didn't know what that was. When I saw the book and saw that one of the chapters was called "Gravity and Planetary Motion," then I REALLY got interested in physics. I took two years of physics in high school and never looked back.

- - -

Hello,
Our group is making a powerpoint on you. I was wondering if you have anything in particular you think we should add into our powerpoint. So far we are putting in backround information about your life and education. We also have slides about the SSC and the Fermilab. Do you suggest we talk about the Higgs particle? (missing link)
Thanks,
Ryan

- - -

Thanks for all of the help. We really appreciate it. It sounds like you have a fun job and you enjoy what you are doing. Also we are celtics fans so we are quite jealous you got to go to that game!

We were wondering if you knew that you wanted to work with physics when you were a senior in High School like us? And what traits are required in a person that wants to go into your field?

- - -

Hi,

Yes, I pretty much knew. I was interested mostly in astrophysics, and started out in college pursuing that area, which combined my early childhood interests in astronomy with what I had learned in my physics classes in high school. I later switched to a straight physics major because at that time there weren't that many jobs in astronomy/astrophysics; there are many more these days. (And, there are astronomers and astrophysicists at Fermilab, so I get to study that stuff after all, whenever I want! Sweet!)

I think the main traits are inquisitiveness, persistence, and some natural talent in logic and mathematics is certainly VERY helpful! I also think that the best scientists are people who are very well rounded -- they play sports, play instruments, sing, dance, travel, read novels, write blogs, climb mountains, etc. (OK, maybe not ALL of that stuff, but you get the drift). The more things you do and experience, the better you can think about the details of the world. My best advice, I think, for young students is just to find yourself, have fun and do meaningful things that make you happy. The rest will follow...

-Mike

- - -
Hello Mr. Michael Syphers

I am excited to find out about your life and more about physics. Thank you for allowing us to adopt you.

Dan T.

- - -

Hello,
I was reading on the internet about the particle accelerator called Cern. How does that compare to the fermilab you work at? And also, what type of results are you hoping for when you have a full on collision between particles?
Thanks,
Ryan D

- - -

I look forward to learning all about your career as a physicist and I hope you will be able to help us with our physics project. Thank you for participating and letting us adopt you as our physicist.

Chris Z

- - -

How long have you specialized in "accelerator physics"?

- - -

Hi,

I've been working in the accerator field for 29 years. I got my PhD (some may say, that's when you become a "real" scientist) 22 years ago.

Thanks for your question,
-Mike
- - -

Hi Dan,

Fermilab may not be the highest energy accelerator lab when the LHC turns on, but it will still have a very important role in high energy physics for many years to come. We are constantly looking at new ways to improve our operation here, and studying new accelerators that we could build that could be complementary to the LHC, using different particles (electrons for instance, rather than protons), and performing studies with more intense beams, not just more energetic beams. So there will be lots to do for a long time.

Cheers,
-Mike

CERN and the LHC

2009-05-15T19:32:00.001-05:00

hello sir, i am a junior and I was wondering if you have ever visited the particle accelerator at CERN, and if you have how does it compare to any other particle accelerator you've seen. Also do you know if Fremi-Lab have any anti-matter? From what I know anti-matter is a result of a particle accelerator experiment.

---------

Hi,

Yes, I have visited CERN and seen their particle accelerators. The LHC at CERN is about 5 times bigger than our biggest accelerator here in the U.S., at Fermilab where I work. It is the largest machine in the world, and when it turns on and runs full steam, it will become the highest energy accelerator. Right now, that honor belongs to the Tevatron at my lab. The LHC is indeed a very impressive sight.

As for your second question, yes Fermilab has lots of antimatter, though "lots" is a relative word. The LHC at CERN will collide protons heading one direction with protons heading in the other direction. These protons travel in side-by-side pipes, and then are brought together at "collision points." In the Tevatron, we collide protons with "antiprotons" going in opposite directions within a single pipe. So for this to work, we need to constantly be making antiprotons every day, all day long. We have the biggest anti-matter factory in the world!

We can make about 300 billion antiprotons every hour of operation. We accelerate protons to a high energy, and then steer them into a target. A lot of debris gets generated from the energy of the collision. For every million protons that hit our target, about 20 antiprotons come out and get collected. We repeat this process over and over until we get enough to collide with the protons in our big accelerator.

But like I said, even though we make lots of anti-matter, it's really not that much. Suppose we run our machines 150 hours a week, and 40 weeks during the year. Then, we'd make 1.8 x 10^15 antiprotons each year. A big number, eh? But an antiproton weighs the same as a proton, which is only 1.7x10^-27 kg. So, in a year we only make a couple of nanograms of antimatter at most; in a good year! In one billion years of constant running we'd make two grams of antimatter...

Fun to think about though!

Thanks for your questions!
-Mike

The Higgs!

2009-05-08T18:35:00.001-05:00

What is the Higgs Boson and why is it so important?

- - -
Hi,

There is a description of the world -- the "Standard Model" -- which says that the universe is composed of a variety of particles. Objects are made of molecules, molecules of atoms, atoms of protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks. There are other particles much like electrons, too -- muons and "tau" particles, and there are tiny little neutral particles -- "neutrinos" -- which we are still learning a lot about these days. When the Standard Model was put together a few decades ago, not all of these particles were known about, but since that time all of the particles mentioned above have been detected, measured, documented, etc. However, the Standard Model has one more particle -- named after Prof. Higgs who proposed that it exists -- which has not been observed yet. It is a particle that would tie the model together in such a way that it would explain why all the other particles have the masses that they do.

If Prof. Higgs is correct and this particle exists, it should be very rare to see. It has to be "made" in the laboratory, and the LHC accelerator being constructed in Europe should be able to make it easily. It might also be being made in our Tevatron accelerator here in Illinois -- we keep sifting through all of our data to see if there are any signs of it. So far, we know where it isn't -- but there's still a chance we'll find it here before the accelerator in Europe turns on.

Thanks for your question!
-Mike

-------

What work have you been doing in the attempt to find the Higgs Boson? What hobbies do you like to do when your not in work? Also, what do like most about your job?

Thanks,
NHS

-------
Hi,

I see three questions here...

(A)
The creation of a Higgs Boson is a very rare event in our accelerators (if it exists at all). To find it, we need to generate trillions of particle collisions and sift through the data. The work that I do on this front is to help to improve the operation of the accelerators in order to provide more collisions per week. In this way we can have some hope of finding the Higgs in a shorter period of time, hopefully before the LHC accelerator comes on line in Europe next year.

Imagine a group of particles (protons) moving in one direction and another group of particles (antiprotons) moving toward them in the other direction. Each group of particles can be rather "diffuse" (remember, these are REALLY SMALL objects!), and so mostly the two groups pass right through each other without anything happen. In our case, each group has about 3-10 Trillion particles. BUT, only about 2-3 of them will actually collide! Since they go around in a circle, they'll all get another chance to collide the next time around. The particles just circulate and the groups pass through each other and eventually many of them end up colliding.

The point is, to increase the chances of collisions we can (1) increase the number of particles going in each direction within the ring, and (2) make the size of the particle groups smaller -- squeeze them together more tightly so that they occupy less space and have more probability of hitting the oncoming particles. These are the kind of things that I work on. I also work on optimizing the entire accelerator complex in order to make more antimatter (antiprotons) for the collisions and use them efficiently.

(B)
I enjoy bicycling, photography, tennis, hiking, and basketball (I was at the double-overtime game yesterday where the Bulls beat the Celtics!).

(C)
I think what I like most about my job is the freedom I have to work on very interesting projects, with the most sophisticated of equipment located within a park-like setting, and with some of the smartest people in the world. (Look around our lab's web site: http://www.fnal.gov .) It is so interesting and so much fun -- and they pay me to do it!!

Cheers,
-Mike

- - -

Thank you,
I have been looking through others' posts and have noticed the Higgs Boson come up many times. Could you please explain what this is and how you are involved with it?
-Dan T

- - -

Hi Dan,

The "Standard Model" of particle physics says that matter is made up mostly of quarks and leptons. Combinations of quarks make protons and neutrons, for example. Gluons are particles that interact with quarks to hold everything together. Other particles, like W and Z bosons (sorry about the funny names; most of this came about in the 60's...) interact with the protons and neutrons to make atomic nuclei. Leptons are light-weight particles, like electrons, though there are others, like muons, taus, and neutrinos. Electrons are bound to nuclei by their mutual interactions with photons (light particles, or electromagnetic field particles). While this can explain how everyday matter is composed, there are many combinations of particle interactions that can be generated, measured, etc., which maybe don't happen every day, but they can be created in the lab -- through particle collisions. The particles we accelerate to near the speed of light have enormous energies (for small particles) and when they collide that energy can be converted into mass (E=mc^2), and that's how all these other particles get formed. They may have been around early in the universe, but not so common now. But, we can make them in our collisions.

Anyway, this "Standard Model" has one last element -- predicted by a Prof. Higgs -- which is a particle that interacts with all particles, and is responsible for giving them the mass that they have. That is, the Higgs boson is required to explain why the different quarks and leptons have the masses that they have. It is the last particle of the model that hasn't been observed yet. And who knows, maybe it doesn't exist! Maybe our "model" is wrong! That's what science is all about, and why it's so exciting. Maybe there's something else to discover, which could take us in a whole new direction in our basic understanding, and which could lead to all new discoveries, adventures, and perhaps new innovations. (My iPod is getting kinda old...)

I'm involved in increasing the number of collisions we make in our accelerator so that we have a better chance of finding the Higgs (if it exists) in a shorter amount of time. If things go very well, we should have enough data in the 2-3 years to say whether there is a Higgs particle or not. By that time, CERN's LHC machine should be operating and then THEY'll be able to say for certain very quickly. The race is on!

Cheers,
-Mike

- - -
Dr. Syphers,
You were saying that you are involved in increasing the chances of creating a Higgs particle. How do you do this? Hopefully you will be able to beat CERN in proving the exsistence of the Higgs Particle!
From,
Ryan D

- - -
Hi Ryan,

Imagine a group of particles (protons) moving in one direction and another group of particles (antiprotons) moving toward them in the other direction. Each group of particles can be rather "diffuse" (remember, these are REALLY SMALL objects!), and so mostly the two groups pass right through each other without anything happen. In our case, each group has about 3-10 Trillion particles. BUT, only about 2-3 of them will actually collide! Since they go around in a circle, they'll all get another chance to collide the next time around. The particles just circulate and the groups pass through each other and eventually many of them end up colliding.

The point is, to increase the chances of collisions we can (1) increase the number of particles going in each direction within the ring, and (2) make the size of the particle groups smaller -- squeeze them together more tightly so that they occupy less space and have more probability of hitting the oncoming particles. These are the kind of things that I work on. I also work on optimizing the entire accelerator complex in order to make more antimatter (antiprotons) for the collisions and use them efficiently.

The more collisions we can make per day (per year, etc.), then the more data we'll have to look through to try to find evidence of the Higgs particle.

Thanks for your question,
-Mike

- - -
Dr. Syphers,
Thats really intersting. So your saying that there are groups of protons and anitprotons that are always traveling in the Tevatron? I was looking at pictures of the fermilab and the tevatron and it appeared to have 2 circles. Are there two particle accelerators, or is one circle something else?
Thanks,
Ryan D

- - -

Hi Ryan,
There are indeed two circles. It might be hard to see in the photograph, but one circle is actually twice as large as the other. The smaller circle is an "injector" accelerator that pre-boosts the energy of the particles before they are sent into the largest accelerator (the Tevatron).
-Mike

- - -
Dr. Syphers,
In our powerpoint we had a couple slides about the Higgs boson. I was looking online and it seems to me that if the higgs particle exsists it would explain the mass of the W and Z bosons. Is this true? or does the higgs particle explain something else?
thanks,
Ryan D

- - -

Yes, the Higgs particle is part of the puzzle that could explain the masses of all the particles in the model -- quarks, leptons, and particularly the W and Z bosons.
-Mike

SSC

2009-05-01T18:28:00.001-05:00

hello, my name is denisse. im a senior ... and i have a question for you, how did you feel about the cancellation of the ssc project?

Hi Denisse,

It was a very hard thing to go through. It was going to be the largest machine built by mankind, and it was a very exciting project to work on. The government had spent over $2 Billion when it came to a close. (It was going to cost about $9B total.) My family and I moved from Chicago to Texas to work on it, and we lived there for almost 5 years. So, it was hard for us to suddenly be out of a job and looking for work again. It also meant to me that the U.S. wasn't as interested in science as it once was, which was sad, too. Luckily, I think this has all been changing the other way in recent years...

Thanks for your question!

-Mike

------

so what exactly was the SSC project? was it a way to conserve energy or what? and who came up with the idea of that project?

-Denisse

------
Hi Denisse,

The SSC was the "Superconducting Super Collider." It was going to be a very large particle accelerator, or "atom smasher." It was to be a circular machine, about 53 miles in circumference(!), in which protons would be accelerated to very high energies in opposite directions, and then collided head-on into each other. The energy of these collisions would be converted into new particles -- particles that had not been created like this since the time of the Big Bang -- and then we could study them. This accelerator would have been more than 20 times as powerful as the Tevatron accelerator that we run at Fermilab today.

We build these machines so that we can study the most fundamental questions, like: What is the universe made of? What forces are involved, and how do they work? Scientists first made particle accelerators back in the 1920's, and they have been getting more and more powerful ever since. The Tevatron at Fermilab was built in 1983, and the SSC was thought up by a group of U.S. scientists back in the early 1980's, soon after that. We finally began to build the SSC in 1988. However, it was canceled in 1993.

-Mike

Black Holes

2008-12-08T19:32:00.000-06:00

Dr. Syphers,

I have heard a lot of concern about black holes resulting from an atom smasher. I understand that these black holes would be of little consequence due to size and stability, but you mentioned to another student that they would quickly "evaporate." How can a black hole evaporate... actually, what exactly IS ia black hole?

Thanks,
Lindsay

P.S. Thanks so much for your time, which this project must have taken a lot of. Your answers were very complete and I feel like I have a greater knowledge about supercolliders and such. I really enjoyed getting to ask you questions, so thank you!

----
Thank you Lindsay,

About 100 years ago, Albert Einstein developed a new theory called the General Theory of Relativity. The theory describes how particles and light behave in reference frames that are accelerating. In particular, the theory shows that gravity can actually be thought of as space and time being "curved" by the presence of mass and energy. Thus a large star curves space around it and planets and spacehips traveling nearby will follow trajectories in space and time due to this curvature. For most "ordinary" cases, it gives the same results as Newton's old theory of gravity -- elliptical orbits, and so forth. However, Einstien's new theory was even more successful, as it explained why the planet Mercury's orbit seemed to "precess" in a way that Newton's theory of gravity couldn't explain. The theory also predicted that light rays will actually be "bent" in a strong gravitational field. This was soon observed to be true through measurements made during a total solar eclipse, and Einstein became world famous overnight!

Anyway, this same theory predicts that if there is enough mass and energy in one place in space, the gravity can be so strong -- space-time can be so curved -- that nothing can get away from the object, not even light. Since light cannot escape this region, it is called a "Black Hole." It requires a great deal of mass in a very small region of space. To date, there has not been any definitive evidence of a Black Hole, though there are some fairly good candidate regions of space that seem to imply a Black Hole might be there (like at the very center of the galaxy).

It wasn't until the 1970's that another famous scientist, Stephen Hawking, developed a theory that showed that a Black Hole (should one exist) should actually evaporate. His theory brings "quantum mechanics" into the Black Hole picture, and involves what are called "virtual particles" being created and instantly annihilated near the "edge" of the Black Hole. Anyway, he shows that this quantum mechanical process can lead to the evaporation of the Black Hole; the larger the Black Hole the longer it would take to evaporate. So, IF little Black Holes "could" be produced in our accelerators, they'd be very very tiny and would last only a very very short time.

I've only given the flavor of the issue; maybe we can talk more details in a future posting. Maybe you'll get to study it in more detail in college(!). It's very fascinating stuff!!

Thanks, and have a great school year,

-Mike Syphers

Just a question...

2008-12-06T21:31:00.000-06:00

Dr. Syphers,

I was just wondering about your take on the entire science vs. religion arguement... Do you face a personal conflict or does it not affect your work at all?

Also, where do you personally see your work in its effects on future technology and generations

Thanks,
Melissa

----
Hi Melissa,

Thanks for your question. I've never personally seen any conflict between science and religion, so it has not affected me in my work or in my daily life.

Science is a "process," through which we try to get closer to the truth of the physical world. That is to say, what we do as scientists is to collect facts through experiments and observations, develop detailed theories that can predict these facts, then test these theories with very well controlled experiments to see if the theories break down. There can be several "theories" that predict the same observed facts. The difference will be if a theory can predict something that has not been observed before. If we do an experiment and we see something that a theory cannot predict, then that theory goes out the window. If a theory predicts something, and we do an experiment and find that prediction to be true, then that gives credence to that particular theory. Note, however, it doesn't prove that the theory is correct either! It just says it's better than the other theories that don't predict this outcome. In this way, we can get closer and closer to the real truth of "how" the physical universe is put together and what the rules are that it appears to follow.

Through this process -- the scientific method -- we try to better understand how the world works. As far as "why" it works that way -- how did it all get started? why are we able to understand it, anyway? "who" made up the rules that we discover? etc. -- these and many others are questions that science cannot even address. So, I really don't think there is any conflict here at all. Science and Religion is not an "either - or" situation. Many, if not most, scientists that I know are very spiritual people. I even know ministers who are scientists and I had a close and well-known colleague (now deceased) who worked with me at Fermilab and was a Jesuit Priest.

-Mike Syphers

----
Hi again, Melissa,

To answer your last question, I'll just say (which I probably said in some earlier posting) that the effects of our research on future generations is very hard to predict. What's not hard to predict is that there will almost certainly be an effect. Every piece of technology we have today -- iPods, computers, flat screen TV's, cars, planes, everything! -- can be directly connected to scientific research that was performed in the past, typically years or decades, sometimes even hundreds of years ago.

-Mike Syphers

Atom Smasher LHC

2008-12-05T21:30:00.000-06:00

Do you have any advice for the skeptics out there that think the LHC collider may create a black hole?

-AG

----
There are equations and theories that can be written down, which show that any black hole formed in our accelerators would be VERY VERY small, and live for only VERY VERY short lengths of time. So short and so small, that they probably cannot be detected, certainly not very easily. They evaporate very quickly. But, to fear that they can be formed and destroy the earth (or even destroy the accelerator!) are totally unfounded.

One simple argument people point out is that we here on earth are constantly bombarded by particles from outer space. The sun and stars and distant galaxies spew out particles all the time (we call them Cosmic Rays) and pass through the earth. (They're passing through you right now!) We constantly detect these particles with our detectors here at Fermilab all the time. In fact, if you're interested, your teacher can see about getting a Cosmic Ray Detector through the QuarkNet program -- visit the web site:

http://quarknet.fnal.gov/

The point is, the particles from space often have MUCH more energy than we can produce with our accelerators. And these particles have been reaching the earth for billions of years -- and the earth is STILL HERE! So, if black holes can be formed this way, they've already been formed (and evaporated) and haven't harmed the earth. So, there should be no worry about the energies that we reach with our accelerators.

-Mike Syphers

The speed of light...

2008-12-04T21:11:00.008-06:00

I read in one of your posts that the accelerators are getting closer to the speed of light. How are you able to calculate their speed?
Carrie

----
Hi Carrie,

We both calculate and measure the speed. First of all, we keep track of how much energy we have given the particles. Then, using a relationship derived by Einstein, you can calculate their speed:

Here, c = speed of light, E = total energy a particle has, and mc^2 = the rest energy
of the particle = its mass times the speed of light squared. You can see that as E gets larger and larger, v gets closer and closer to c (but never quite reaches it).

[p.s. -- let me know if my notation isn't understandable. It's hard to embed equations in the written text, at least for me...]

As for actually measuring the speed, we can time the particle beam as it goes around our accelerators. For instance, the time it takes -- at the speed of light -- to go around the Tevatron is 0.000021 seconds (21 microseconds). That seems pretty small, but we have oscilloscopes and other equipment that can measure this time extremely accurately (like to +/- picoseconds or better). Of course, to get a good measurement of the speed this way, we need to know the distance traveled. The circumference of the Tevatron is actually 6283.19 meters (two pi kilometers!), accurate to a fraction of a centimeter. As the particle beam wanders around, we can steer it with small electromagnets to make sure it is centered within the pipe that it travels in. We can move it around by small fractions of a millimeter to make sure it is on the right orbit everywhere.

-Mike Syphers

----
It sounds like you really enjoy to travel and see the United States. That is something that I would really like to get the chance to do one day. Have you ever traveled out of the country for your job?

I do understand how you calculate and measure the speed of the accelerators. I do have another question though. How often does the speed increase getting closer to the speed of light?

-Carrie

----
Hi Carrie,

"Have you ever traveled out of the country for your job?"

Yes, I have. Over the past 20 years, I've traveled on business several times each to France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, and once each to Austria, The Netherlands, and Russia. I've had a couple of opportunities to go to Asia (India, China, and Japan) during that time, too, but I couldn't make those trips for various reasons; maybe some day...

"How often does the speed increase getting closer to the speed of light?"

We have a series of accelerators that give the particles energy. It's like the gears in a bicycle, say, where each stage or accelerator is better suited for its particular energy range. So, at Fermilab for example, the accelerators go something like this:

Proton at rest: energy = 938 MeV (= mc^2 of the proton)

Then, Kinetic Energy is provided by...

Straight accelerators:

Preacc: provides 0.75 MeV; total energy = 938.75 MeV
speed goes from 0 --> 4% the speed of light, c
Linac: provides 399.25 MeV; total energy = 1338 MeV
speed goes from 4 --> 71% c (takes a few microseconds)

Circular accelerators:

Booster: provides 7600 MeV; total energy = 8938 MeV = 8.938 GeV
speed goes from 71 --> 99.45% c (this takes 0.33 sec)
Main Injector: provides 142,000 MeV; total energy = 150.938 GeV = 0.151 TeV
speed goes from 99.45 --> 99.998% c (this takes about 1 sec)
Tevatron: provides 830,000 MeV; total energy = 981 GeV = 0.981 TeV
speed goes from 99.998 --> 99.99995% c (this takes about 20 sec)

Once particles in the Tevatron are at that final energy, we keep them at this energy/speed while they collide head-on with particles moving in the other direction around the circle.

Below is a plot of the speed (fraction of the speed of light) versus the kinetic energy we've given each of the protons. You can see how quickly the speed starts to approach the speed of light. By the time a proton goes through a billion volts (1 GeV), it's almost at 90% c. We can keep giving it energy (and that energy is real, and can do real work), but its speed doesn't change much after a few billion electron volts.

-Mike Syphers

----
Hi Dr. Syphers,

The places you have visited sound very interesting, and a lot of the same ones that I would enjoy seeing. Since you have been so many places, are you able to speak any other languages? If so, how many and what ones.

Finding the speed of an accelerator seems very long and complicated. How long has it taken you to fully understand everything that goes into them?

Thanks
Carrie

----
Hi Carrie,

a) I studied French in school, and one semester of Russian, for good measure. But, I only speak a little (tiny bit) of French these days. Most of the large physics labs that I visit and the conferences I go to tend to speak English, so that's been nice (for me). I always feel a bit odd, though, when the people from these other countries know English, but I don't know their native language. It's too bad for Americans that we don't have as many opportunities to need to learn other languages; it's not enough to just study them in High School.

b) To really understand the speed of the particles in these accelerators, one needs to have a good grasp of Einstein's special theory of relativity. While I learned a little about it in my senior year in high school (2nd year physics class), I studied it in much more detail in a course my sophomore year in college. To be very comfortable with it, however, probably took a few more years and more experience using it in problem solving.

Cheers,

-Mike Syphers

----
Hi Dr. Syphers,

a) That is really cool. Is is hard to learn Russian? I do agree that it is a bit odd that we do not get the chance to learn other languages unlike other countries that learn English at a young age.

b) This sounds very interesting. I have enjoyed my physics class so far and I cannot wait to learn so much more in the rest of the year!

Thank you,
Carrie

----
Hi Carrie,

a) Yes. It was hard for me, at least. It was learning a whole different alphabet, and we had to learn how to write all over again. (We actually started out with the large, lined paper that you use in 1st grade to learn how to print and write in Russian!) But, it was cool to learn about the language, even if I didn't go very far with it.

b) Thanks for your insightful questions and participation. I hope you enjoy the rest of your experience studying and thinking about physics!

-Mike Syphers

----
Hi!

Thank you very much for taking time out of your day for the past three weeks to talk to me. I enjoyed learning about your job, and your travels.

I wish you the best!
Carrie

Accelerators

2008-12-03T17:17:00.000-06:00

Q: I get what accelerator physics is, but how can we really use it in real life? And why do you need to switch over from the Tevatron to the LHC? How are they different?

Hello Dr. Syphers,
My name is Shannon...
I was a little confused about the LHC accelerator. I know what it is, but how does it work? Also, how is this different from the Tevatron?

----
Why Accelerators, and how do they work?

Hi all,

This is in response to several questions, like the ones above, which are fairly similar to each other, namely ...

"How can we use accelerator physics in real life? Why do we need to switch over to the LHC from the Tevatron? How does the LHC work? How is it different from the Tevatron??"

The accelerators I work on use electric fields to accelerate charged particles and give them more and more kinetic energy. You may have learned (or will learn) that a particle can gain energy by doing work on it; work is basically "force times distance"; and the force here is the force due to an electric field. So, by subjecting particles like electrons or protons (charged!) to electric fields we can give them kinetic energy and they speed up.

I should point out, however, that eventually they get closer and closer to the speed of light, which is a "limit" that they cannot cross, in accordance with Einstein's theory of special relativity. But, they can (and do) continue to gain energy. We see and use Einstein's theory in our work every day. In fact, these accelerators wouldn't work at all if we didn't know about relativity.

Most particle accelerators were developed to study elementary particles like electrons, protons, ions, etc. The first ones were built in the 1920's and 1930's. But there have been many "spin-offs" of these devices. For instance, the older-style television sets (before "flat screen" TV's) use electron beams in them. They are actually particle accelerators! You might have one in your home today. In this case, the electrons are subjected to electric fields that produce total voltages of 10,000 volts or so. We say, then, that an electron in this scenario would gain a total kinetic energy of 10,000 electron volts (10 keV). This is just shorthand that we use in the accelerator business, because we tend to deal with elementary particles like electrons and protons, etc. In terms of Joules of energy, 1 eV = 1.6 x 10^(-19) Joule.

Other spin-offs of accelerator physics have been in the field of medicine, where x-ray machines (electron accelerators), MRI machines, PET scans, etc. use technologies developed for particle accelerators. There is even proton and neutron cancer therapy treatments that use particles from accelerators. Accelerators are also used in industry for welding, chemical analysis, and many other uses. But what has driven all of this has been the quest to examine nature's smallest particles and most fundamental forces.

The Tevatron is the highest energy accelerator in the world today. It accelerates protons through a total of 1 Trillion volts (10^(12) volts). Thus, the protons each have an energy of 1 TeV (which is how the Tevatron got its name). The LHC will make protons with energies of 7 TeV. Both of these accelerators are used, or will be used, to collide particles going in opposite directions at these high energies. Particles in nature have not had these kinds of energies since just after the Big Bang, so we are reproducing conditions from way back then. The purpose of both of these accelerators is to learn how the universe is put together by creating and studying particles that existed in great numbers long ago.

There isn't a very large fundamental difference between the LHC and the Tevatron. The LHC is larger, has stronger magnets and will give particles 7 times more energy than the Tevatron does. This just allows us to create more particles with more energy and study smaller and smaller things, hopefully gaining further insights into how the universe works. In each case, particles pass through electric fields, giving them energy (and momentum). Then, they are directed around in a circle using electromagnets so that they can pass through the electric fields again and gain MORE energy. The required strength of the electromagnets depends upon the momentum of the particles; as the particles gain momentum the magnets have to be turned on stronger and stronger. So, since we can only build magnets "so strong," then the circles get bigger and bigger for higher particle energies. The Tevatron is 4 miles in circumference. The LHC is 17 miles around!

I've left out a lot of details here, but these blogs can get rather long...
I'm sure you have more questions, so have at it!

Cheers,

-Mike Syphers

----
Hi this is Will
I was just wondering, when you collide the particles do you actually see anything or because its so fast you only see what happens with the ultra high speed cameras? And what do they look like, explosions or like fireworks or what? Thanks again for doing this program.

----
Hi Will,

That's a great question. First of all, what does it mean to "see" something? I mean, really physically. When you "see" something, physically what happens is that photons enter your eye through the iris (the detector's limiting aperture), get focused by the eye's lens, and interact with molecules in your retina that create electrical signals which are transmitted to your brain. Based upon which portions of the retina are activated, and with what "intensity," the brain interprets what it detects to decide what it was you just "saw". Might you agree with all that?

So, the way we "see" things in our experiment is to allow the particles to collide, which creates new particles moving in lots of directions. These new particles interact with different parts of our detectors, which generate electrical signals that are monitored by computers (the "brains" of the experiment). The computer signals are stored and reconstructed later. These detectors have magnetic fields built in so that we can monitor how the charged particles move around -- thus, we can determine their charge (pos or neg) and most of the time their momentum as well. We have blocks of metal that can absorb particles, too. When these blocks heat up, we can determine what energy the particles had. We put all of this type of information from a single collision together, and allow the computer to reconstruct what happened. (Of course, the computer only does what a scientist tells it to do, so it's actually the scientists who program the computers that diagnose what happened.)

At the bottome of this response is an image of what the computer might reconstruct from a collision. The lines and curves emanating from the center are "tracks" reconstructed by the computer program to show where particles went. The colored bars along the circumference of the program indicate the amount of energy that the particles had.

As you can see, they do indeed look a little bit like "fireworks." Cool? or not?

Doomsday??

2008-12-02T20:33:00.000-06:00

Hey, I'm Will. Thank you for participating in this program, it is very kind of you. I'm interested in doing some type of engineering and I'm interested in physics because of that. Do you think the machine your making could produce black holes and potentially destroy the world...a doomsday machine?

----
Hi Will,

No, I do not believe we have anything to worry about. This is an interesting question that has come up in the (sensationalized?) news media lately regarding the LHC accelerator coming on line in Europe. The earth is bombarded every second by particles that are emitted from the sun and other sources, particles with much higher energies than what we can make in our accelerators. These particles have been bombarding the earth for billions of years -- and the earth is still here.

But, perhaps in a later post, I can go into more detail about the black hole question. It is interesting to think about and discuss...

Cheers,
-Mike

----
Thanks for clearing that up. I did not know about all those other particles hitting the earth. It was just something I had seen on the news and thought you would be the perfect person to ask. If it ever did produce black holes, what would they do and how big would they be?

Thanks again, Will

----
Hi Will,

First of all, let me point out that while Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicts that Black Holes can exist, and while there are several very good pieces of evidence that specific Black Holes do exist (like at the center of our galaxy), there has never been an absolute observation that says "this IS a Black Hole." (However, I personally think that the evidence for a Black Hole at the center of our galaxy is very convincing!)

Having said that, let me point out also that the way space and time behave in the vicinity of extremely massive objects, like stars and galaxies, does not necessarily mean that space and time behave exactly that way at very very small scales (like near "point particles" such as electrons and quarks). We call electrons "point particles" because, to our knowledge, they don't appear to have any real size. But to be honest, maybe we just haven't learned how to look at that small a scale yet.

The reason I bring this up is because the Black Holes that would be predicted to be created at, say, the LHC would be extremely small. Extremely small. There is a formula (which, again, we don't know if it is truly applicable at very small scales) for the size of a Black Hole. The formula is

where in the formula, R is the radius of the Black Hole, M is the mass inside, G is Newton's gravitational constant, and c is the speed of light.

So, I'll ask you to do the calculation -- if the LHC collides two protons, each with 7 TeV of energy, and all of that energy is turned into mass, and that mass just sits there as a Black Hole, what would its radius be?

Here's a hint: Mc^2 for our particle will have a value of 14 TeV; 1 TeV of energy = 1 x 10^12 eV; and, 1 eV = 1.6 x 10^-19 Joules.

Note that the "radius" of a proton is about 10^-15 m, and the mass of this particle that would be created in the LHC is about 14,000 times heavier than a single proton.

Let me know what answer you get!
-Mike Syphers

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R= 3.69 x 10^-48

WOW, that is small, since 10^50 is statistically impossible.....yeah there is nothing to worry about. Thanks for showing me that, i love numbers they really help show the magnitude, or lack there of, of the "black holes". Thanks again, Will.

Super Job

2008-12-01T20:27:00.003-06:00

Dr. Syphers,

In your job what is the most interesting or unusual project that you have had a chance to work on?

Johnathon

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Hi Johnathon,

I'd have to say that the most interesting project I ever worked on was the Superconducting Super Collider project. I worked on it a little bit, off and on, for a few years, and then full-time for about 5 years. It was a brand new accelerator laboratory that was being built just south of Dallas, Texas. Construction started in 1989, but was stopped in 1993. I was the 67th employee to be hired to work on it; when the project was canceled in 1993, there were over 2000 people at the laboratory. So, I was there at the very beginning and got to participate in a lot of very important design decisions for the project. Congress decided in October of 1993, however, that the national budget needed to be balanced, and that we couldn't afford to continue building it. (The total cost was going to be about $8 -- $10 Billion.) The main accelerator was to be 53 miles in circumference (we had already built 17 miles of tunnel for it -- about the size of the LHC in Europe!) and the energy of the protons would have been 20 times the energy of the Tevatron that I work on today at Fermilab. It would have been the largest scientific instrument ever built. Even though it was halted, it was certainly the most interesting and exciting project I have ever gotten to work on, and it was perhaps the most valuable experience of my career.

-Mike Syphers

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Dr. Syphers,
Thank you for the reply, and in your opinion do you think that it would have been more beneficial to us to complete that project or was it a good decision by the government to stop the project?

I think it was an unfortunate decision to stop the project. It was good to balance the budget, which the government should always try to do; but, I think it was a huge sacrifice to pull the plug on that project. Today, people look at the huge accelerator being built in Europe, and ask me, "Why aren't we building one that big?" And I have to tell them about the SSC project and its failure. So, I just hope people learn that it's important to do basic research -- for knowledge's sake and for the economy -- and that projects like this take a long time to build, that the pay-off can be huge, and that our representatives in Congress need to be told by the citizens that they (the citizens) think this is important.

-Mike Syphers

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Thank you so much for your reply!

i find it amazing that one can actually love what they do all of their life.
is there anything you've done in phisics that has been noted on a larger scale??
have you made any important breakthroughs or discoveries?

-henry

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Hi Henry,

I am sorry to report that I haven't made any scientific "breakthroughs" or "discoveries" on a very large scale. That doesn't really happen too often in life, or to too many people. But, like most scientists, I've done my share of small increments in knowledge that have helped things along. For instance, the Top Quark is an important particle of nature that was discovered at Fermilab in 1995. To discover it, we had to collide protons and antiprotons together and this required very tiny beams of particles moving head-on toward each other. As we accelerate these particles, there are many things along their journey which try to make the beams larger, so we have to work very hard to keep them small. In the late 1980's I figured out one of the mechanisms that was making the beam too large, and re-designed a beam transport system to keep the beam smaller. This helped reduce the beam size by about a factor of two, and thus helped generate more collisions for the Tevatron. Did I discover the top quark? No, but I certainly helped make the discovery possible. We all do our part, and it's all important. In more recent years, I've worked further on these types of problems, and the rate at which the Tevatron collides particles is about 300 times what it was in 1990! Will we discover the Higgs particle before the LHC does? We'll see...

-Mike Syphers

Adopted...

2008-10-20T11:17:00.002-05:00

Working at several national laboratories over the past 28 years and giving public tours, giving lectures, and training young employees (scientists, engineers, operators, administrative assistants, ...) in the process, I've replied to a lot of questions about physics, both general and specific. Most recently, after helping guide a couple of talented high school interns at Fermilab, I realized that some of the things I've talked to them about and some of the presentations I made to them might be useful to many others not directly employed in the field. Maintaining a blog site is perfect for me in this regard - - I can post links to interesting sites, articles, etc., relay pictures and video links, and so on; but also, directly receive and answer people's questions, which is what I value most.

As a way to get started, I recently signed up for the Adopt-a-Physicist program through the American Physical Society, wherein I was "adopted" by three high school physics classes (from Ohio, Mississsippi, and Illinois) who posted questions to me almost every day for three weeks. It was a great experience, and basically started me blogging. So, I'll use this site to allow those students to continue if they like, and hopefully others will get in on the fun.

2008-10-20T11:16:00.001-05:00

Welcome to my blog!