As a kid, science was my big deal. Science fairs were even bigger. In my senior year of high school, I made my grand project, a 10MEV cyclotron. It weighed about 1200 pounds, was made mostly of iron plate, and used my dads welder to power its magnetic coils. I won the statewide science fair in Indiana, and went on to the national science fair. Particle accelerators are big, powerful and complex machines. While I don’t know about you, I find them lots of fun. Nuclear physics was my destiny, or so I thought. But a computer glitch in the university financial aids office started me on the path of being a meteorologist, but thats another story.
So it was with some joy that I saw a couple of guys made a photo and video1 video2 tour of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) which you actually cross over when driving on I-280 in the bay area.
As the world longest yet straightest object, it is a place I’ve always wanted to visit, if only to be able to run towards the vanishing point and feel like I’m getting nowhere fast.