Particle Accelerators
Hello Humans! Yesterday, I mentioned something called a "Particle Accelerator." Most of you guys don't know what the heck this amazing technological breakthrough in science this is. Well, I will tell you. It's a piece of equipment, that spans many kilometers, and has a couple of loops, mostly to save the cost of land, but also because it makes a centrifugal force on the particle. This piece of equipment, well, it accelerates particles. And while that doesn't sound like much at first, it really is something. It accelerates particles to nearly the speed of light. That's nearly 2.998X10^8 m/s. That is super fast! It's fast enough that when an atom hits the end of the accelerator, it explodes. And you have to have a HUGE force in order to make an atom explode. The coolest thing, is we are able to make particles accelerate this fast by using electromagnetism, or magnetic fields. It's such a simple Physics subject, but when applied in the right way, it can literally change our perception of the world as we know it.
My dream is to work with one of these machines, and focus on what makes up the three amazing sub-atomic particles that make up our world. I want to study quarks, Leptons, force carriers, and maybe things even smaller than them. I want to apply the properties of these sub-atomic particles to the universe, to see if they play a large roll in how our universe is organized and works today. And the best thing? I'll be able to use my two true loves every single day: Physics and Chemistry.
I've said a couple of times that I first fell in love with the atom, when my favorite 7th grade Science teacher, Ms. Clinger, taught us the wrong way to draw an atom. I thought it was so cool to try to picture these little atoms floating in the air. One thing that I vividly remember in that 7th grade class, is that for 3 days, Clinger went on a vacation. During those three days, we had a substitute, but Clinger being the smart teacher that she was, decided to have him show a movie, because substitutes never teach well, and if they do, the whole class isn't listening anyways. The movie we watched was about an American team racing against the French/Swiss team to find the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson is a particle, that some scientist predicted, but never found. So people took his predictions and put them to the test. The Higgs Boson has now been found in electrons, and is dubbed, "The God Particle," because it is believed that in this super tiny sub-atomic particle, lies the secrets to the Universe. I thought that it was fascinating, watching all of the super-old computer equipment projecting graph after graph of exploding electrons, in an almost-bank-rupt science laboratory, with only the hopes of finding this extremely tiny particle.
In the few years that we've known about these particles that make up electrons, we've discovered a lot, but there is so much more to be found. I hope to be in that boat, if not, at the fore-front of it sometime in the near future. But, I've changed my mind about what I want to do many times within the past year, so I guess we'll just see how long this dream of mine lasts. Stay wild, flower child.