Blog 26: Senior Project Reflection

(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your 2-Hour Presentation and/or your senior project? Why?

I am most proud of my Science Project. It was very ambitious, but I managed to pull it off and I was quite proud of the results. It was my own research and my own conclusion. I have had professors look at it and say, "I didn't think of it like that," or, "This is an interesting approach. I don't think anyone else has tried it this way." It meant so much to me to hear my ideas being taken seriously. In addition, I did the extra work and took it to the County Science Fair. There were many times when I felt like giving up on that, and I would make up these excuses as to why I should, but in the end I ignored them and I am very proud of myself for doing so. 

(2) Questions to Consider

What assessment would you give yourself on your 2-Hour Presentation (self-assessment)?

AE-I think I had a fairly ambitious presentation. For one thing, I had to present on four answers (all of which were approved.) I have heard that having more than three answers is quite rare, and as far as I know I am the only person in the class with four answers. My activity was also difficult and I feel I connected it well to all four of my answers and I feel like I did a good job of showing the class the problems physicists really have to face and what they actually do. I could have taken the easy way out on the activity and had a few worksheets or something, but I took a risk and it paid off, as everyone's Cloud Chamber worked and it was nice to see how excited they seemed when they saw the tracks appear. I feel that my Sponge activity was quite creative also and I put a lot of time into making those particles. 

What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)?

AE-I got an AE on the I-Search, the Exit Interview, the first Independent Component, and the Science Project. I feel that alone should put me at an AE, especially if I get the AE I feel I deserve on the 2-hour, but I also believe I went above and beyond in the level of mentorship I did. I could have very well taken the easy way out and looked for a Cal Poly graduate student as a mentor or something of the sort, but I was persistent and got mentorship with some of the best minds in particle physics today. I'm extremely grateful to Professor Wise for taking me on, but I'm also quite proud of myself for being courageous enough to speak to him in the first place. Besides that I also took the time to go to the LA County Science Fair (something only three other people did.) 

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?

My persistence really paid off. There were so many times I could have taken an easier route, but I always resisted and I got results like my Science Project, my mentorship, and the activity for my 2-hour. I managed to learn calculus even with numerous setbacks and failed attempts at finding classes, and I took the physics and math SAT subject tests even when I didn't have to, and ended up getting into excellent colleges. I like my new attitude of refusing to back down, even if (and I'm sure some do) people find me insufferable or annoying. I think it will serve me well, as I have experienced firsthand the realities of being a woman in a scientific or technical job. No one is going to bully me out of the field, and I am not going to let myself make excuses as to why I shouldn't do something if it's hard or if there's a chance it may not work out.  

(4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would have you done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?

I think if I had a time machine (which is possible, theoretically, by utilizing the power of wormholes) I would first collect my Nobel Prize for inventing said time machine and then I would go back and try not to be so combative. I think I've alienated people, and I'm sorry about that. It means I've had to go about a lot of stuff alone when I could have had help. I have a strong personality, and when I'm passionate about something and I feel that I'm in the right (which I still stand by) I do get combative and people don't like that. It's my personality and I'm not really sure what to do about it, but it is rather too bad and is really the only thing that took away from my enjoyment of my senior project. 

(5) Finding Value

People always talked a lot about how smart I was, and honestly, I didn't see it. I know a lot of things, that's true. But I hate being wrong, and I hate not being absolutely perfect at something the first time I try it. Those aren't qualities that make someone a smart person, in my opinion. I never tried anything new, I never really tried to challenge myself academically, I didn't like trying to figure out new ways to do things, preferring to learn what someone else had already figured out. In the end, though, this wasn't enough for me. I took a huge risk picking this as my senior topic and stepped completely out of my comfort zone. In the end, I think it paid off. Finally, I've learned to really think for myself. I have confidence in my own thoughts, my own ideas, and even if no one else on the planet thinks that way, I have learned that's perfectly alright, as long as you can back up your thoughts with evidence. If it worked for Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, I think it can work for me. This doesn't get you very many friends and, at least at the beginning, it usually doesn't win you very many admirers, but in the end, the people who think this way are the ones that history remembers, and the ones that truly leave something behind on Earth. 

The Apple Tree of Cambridge

A little while ago, I was watching "Return of the King," when I was struck by a little inspiration, so I went and drew this- 

Excuse the quality, I don't have a working scanner right now. Anyway, it is the White Tree of Gondor: 

But with apples instead of stars. It is meant to represent the famous apple tree that dropped a fruit onto Isaac Newton's head and gave him his great epiphany about gravity-the Apple Tree of Cambridge. Gravity is sort of curious-it seems very straightforward, but in fact it is perhaps the least understood of all the fundamental forces. Currently the best theory of gravity, Einstein's general relativity, breaks down at the quantum level. There is a total disconnect between the physics of the very small and gravity. All of the other fundamental forces have particles (quanta) behind them-electromagnetism has the photon, the strong nuclear force has the gluon, and the weak nuclear force has the Z and W Bosons. But not gravity. An experimentally verifiable theory that links gravity to quantum mechanics is perhaps the most hotly pursued issue in physics today.

I wonder what Newton would think if he could see all of the work that is going on today to master his theories, more than three hundred years after their inception. Isaac Newton was no doubt one of the greatest, if not the greatest, thinkers in history. The fact that the best minds in the world are still working at improving his theories really puts the human race in perspective to me, and serves as a reminder that the universe is both incredibly mysterious and endlessly fascinating. 

All the Particles! +Bonus Einstein!

The gang's all here! If anyone wants one, I'm thinking I will make them for around $12. Of course, if you supply the yarn the price will drop. I could also make any other particle from the Standard Model, not just the ones pictured here. They all have their symbols embroidered somewhere on them. 

Example:

And they all have a little personality. Like the electron is sad because he is "negative..." haha. 

One More Particle

Sorry I didn't get to post this last night-I had a lot of trouble uploading the pictures. Anyway, this little guy is the last particle I knitted! He is the mighty W Boson.

W Boson: The W Boson is the carrier particle of the weak nuclear force, which is responsible for radioactive decay. Calling it the weak force is a bit of a misnomer, as it is actually more powerful than gravity. It is, however, the most difficult force to measure. It is predicted that dark matter particles, like supersymmetric neutralinos, will interact via the weak force only and many experiments have been set up to verify that. 

More Particles

Here are some more particles! The red one is the top quark and the white one is the electron.

Top Quark: This is the most massive particle of the Standard Model, and thus provides the largest contribution to the mass of the Higgs Boson. This is very important in my explanation of the Hierarchy Problem in my second answer.

Electron: One of the first particles ever discovered. This is an excellent example of a fermion that interacts with the electromagnetic forces.

Particle Progress

Here are some of the particles so far. I like them, I think they are really cute so far. The round purple one will be the muon, and the long gray one will be the photon. The star shaped guy in the back is the Higgs Boson (I didn't make that one. I bought it from the http://particlezoo.net/. Thank you to Julie Peasley!)

Here are some thrilling facts about these particles in the context of my senior project:

Muon: This little particle comes from cosmic rays and was detected by a cloud chamber way back in the primordial days of particle physics. To me, this discovery is proof that particles do not always have to be found in particle accelerators, and the Large Hadron Collider is not the be-all-end-all of experimental particle physics. I have faith that our best hope of detecting supersymmetric particles will be through dark matter detection experiments which, like cloud chambers, detect particles that enter our atmosphere from space.

Photon: This particle has to be massless in order for it to travel at the necessary speed of light. It perpetuates electricity, light, and magnetism. If dark matter particles or supersymmetric particles interacted with this particle, we would have easily detected them, as it is one of the easiest forces to measure. Dark matter is called dark because it does not interact with light and thus we cannot perceive it. 

Higgs Boson: Aka "the God Particle," this boson was one of the most recently discovered particles predicted by the Standard Model. The mass of the Higgs Boson produces constraints on supersymmetric parameter space, and limits which supersymmetric models and particles can fit the necessary stability and density to be dark matter. The Higgs Boson should also be much more massive than it is; while it is giving mass to other particles, they are giving mass to it. The supersymmetric contributions to this should cancel the extra contributions and leave us with the nice Higgs mass of ~126 GeV seen in the LHC.

Cheat Sheet for my 2-hour Class

Vocabulary sheet for my class to follow along with. If anyone sees this and would like me to add anything, please let me know.

Particle Physics Cheat Sheet! 

Standard Model-a list of all the particles, their properties, and interactions

Fermion-a particle that obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics and is a component of matter and has half-integer spin 

Boson-a particle that obeys Bose-Einstein statistics and carries a force such as the electromagnetic force and has whole-integer spin

Spin-a form of angular momentum that is a basic property of particles and helps determine if they are a boson or a fermion 

Supersymmetry-a theory that says each Standard Model particles has a mirror image twin, so that each Standard fermion has a supersymmetric boson and vice-versa

Lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP)-the lightest particle in a given supersymmetry theory

Neutralinos-neutral supersymmetric particles 

Parameter space-a set of values that determines certain properties of supersymmetric particles and their interactions

Spontaneous supersymmetry breaking-the energy level at which supersymmetric particles are "broken" into Standard Model particles 

Planck scale-1.22x10^19 GeV, the scale at which gravity may become integrated with quantum mechanics and strings may become visible 

String theory-the idea that all particles are actually tiny, 1-dimensional vibrating strings that must exist in extra spatial dimensions

Superstrings-Strings that represent supersymmetric particles

Virtual particles-particles that exist for such a short period of time they aren't considered part of normal reality

Time-energy Uncertainty Principle-formulated by Werner Heisenberg, this suggests that for particles with extremely short lifespans, there is a degree of uncertainty to the energy that can be measured 

Casimir Effect-two uncharged metal plates in a vacuum will still feel a force between them that arises from the vacuum itself

Vacuum energy-sometimes referred to as the Cosmological Constant, this seemingly paradoxical concept arises from quantum field theory and states that the vacuum of space has energy associated with virtual particles

Quantum field theory-states that all particles have all-pervasive fields associated with them, like the Higgs Field, that exist throughout all of space

Higgs field-the field associated with the Higgs Boson that gives mass to other particles as they interact with it

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR)-the leftover microwave radiation from the energy of the Big Bang, sometimes referred to as the oldest light int he universe

Strong nuclear force-the force that holds the quarks in protons and neutrons together, and is unleashed in nuclear weapons, carried by the gluon 

Weak nuclear force-the force responsible for the decay of radioactive isotopes into more stable isotopes, carried by the W and Z bosons

Electromagnetic force-the force responsible for light, electricity, and magnetism, carried by the photon

Large Hadron Collider-extremely powerful particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland 

eV, MeV, GeV, TeV-Electronvolts, megaelectronvolts, gigaelectronvolts, and teraelectronvolts. These are units of energy that are used to define particle mass, because mass and energy are equivalent.

Dark matter-the "missing mass" of the universe that does not interact with light and is of unknown properties

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs)-large particles that only interact through the weak nuclear force and gravity 

WIMP miracle-the lucky coincidence that the WIMP relic density should exactly match that of dark matter 

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis-early universe production of light elements hydrogen, helium, and lithium

Thermal production-states that WIMPs were produced during the early, hot stages of the Big Bang 

Non-thermal production-states that WIMPs were produced during the universe's transition into a cooler state

Freeze-out-the point at which WIMPs can no longer find an anti-WIMP to annihilate with and the density reaches what it is today

Anti-matter-particles with the opposite charge and spin of their normal counterparts; if they touch normal particles, both will explode in a burst of energy 

Presentation Practice

So, I practiced my 2 hour presentation for the first time on Friday for Professor Wise and his graduate student Bart. Despite the 20+ minutes we spent trying to figure out how to draw the Feynman diagram showing the stop squark contribution to the Higgs scalar, I thought it went very smoothly. I particularly enjoyed drawing on the giant blackboard (with recent notes drawn by my fourth interview, Joe Polchinski!)
They both gave me very helpful notes, and after presenting to people at Caltech I think presenting to the class should be a breeze. I've cleared up the inaccuracies and we arrived at explanations that (hopefully) will be accessible to everyone.
I have loved my experience at Caltech and I could not be more grateful to Professor Wise for taking the time out of his two jobs (in two different states) to help me with this project. He has been the Gandalf of my senior project-even when he had "no memory of" the Feynman drawing.

Sponge Activity and EQ Display Changes

Thanks to an excellent suggestion from my carpool driver (Emma, you know who are) I have come up with a better sponge activity and a way to display my EQ.

Originally, the class was going to be divided into physicist groups (i.e., the Planck group, the Einstein group, the Heisenberg group etc.) Now, I am planning on dividing them into particle groups. Now I can incorporate my other passion (knitting) into my presentation as well-on each desk will be a knitted plushie particle with a card that has it's name, spin, charge, and mass, as well as my essential question. For my sponge activity, I will have each group look up what their particle does and an interesting fact about it and then share out to the class.

So far, I'm planning on having seven groups (6 of 4 and 1 of 5) with the following particles:
Higgs Boson (important to my presentation that people understand how this one works)
Photon
W Boson (important for my third answer)
Z Boson (also important for my third answer)
Gluon
Top Quark (also important to my presentation for my second answer)
Muon (discovered by a cloud chamber, which is my activity)

I will post pictures as I knit these little fellows.

A Physics Memorial Day

In honor of Memorial Day, these are a few of the faces of physics and astronomy who died much too soon, sometimes in the prime of their careers. As Gandalf would say, "all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

Marie Curie, November 7, 1867-July 4, 1934
One of the greatest physicists and chemists ever, Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, one of only two individuals ever to win two Nobel Prizes in two different fields, and the only person ever to win them in two different scientific fields (physics and chemistry.) Curie is best known for her discovery of radioactivity, which has directly yielding life-saving advances in medicine and nearly all areas of science. Due to the years she spent exposed to high levels of radiation, Curie died of aplastic anemia at the age of 66.

Karl Schwarzschild, October 9, 1873-May 11, 1916
This German physicist was the first to provide an exact solution to Einstein's field equations for his theory of general relativity. He managed this incredible accomplishment while serving in the horrible conditions of the Eastern Front. A disease contracted due to these conditions led to his untimely death at age 42, very soon after he wrote his papers on relativity. Schwarzschild's work led to the acceptance of relativity and is responsible for much of our understanding of black holes and other cosmic phenomena.

Leo Szilard, February 11, 1898-May 30, 1964
A Hungarian-born Jew, Szilard fled the incoming Nazi regime and convinced President Roosevelt to begin developing an atomic weapon. Along with Enrico Fermi, Szilard helped invent the first nuclear reactor. However, he was not proud of this work and dedicated the rest of his life until his death at 66 to ensuring that science was used for peaceful purposes. Szilard is responsible for some of the radiation treatments used today in cancer patients.

Enrico Fermi, September 29, 1901-November 28, 1954

Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor with his colleague, Leo Szilard, and was one of the first to work on particle theory. Fermi refused to cooperate with the fascist regime during the war, and later advocated for the responsible use of nuclear technology, and it is because of his work that we are able to harness nuclear power today. Likely due to his work with unsafe nuclear technology, Fermi died of stomach cancer at just 53 years old. 

 

Erwin Planck, March 12, 1893-January 23, 1945

The fourth child of great physicist Max Planck and his first wife, Erwin Planck shared his father's love for their homeland. Planck hated seeing Germany fall under Nazi power, and became involved in the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler. He was caught and later executed. 

The crew of the Challenger, January 28, 1986

Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe were reminders of the courage it takes for space travel and scientific discovery and the price that is sometimes paid. 

Carl Sagan, November 9, 1934-December 20, 1996

An American astronomer and astrophysicist, Carl Sagan made it his life's work to bring people together through science. Sagan was an advocate for space travel and for the search for extraterrestrial life. He was the first to posit that Jupiter's moon Europa might be habitable. It was later discovered that Europa does indeed have water on its surface. Unfortunately, Sagan was never able to witness the 21st century advancements in space exploration, dying from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome at the age of 62.

Visit to the Space Shuttle Endeavor

Pictures from my visit to the California Science Center to see the space shuttle Endeavor. If you haven't been, you need to go. No picture I could take does it justice-it is truly awe-inspiring, even for someone as cynical and jaded as me (haha.)

Please tell your Congressional representatives that NASA deserves to be funded. Manned/unmanned spaceflights yield discoveries that benefit all of humanity. 

Chandra X-ray telescope to survey X-ray emissions from supernovae and other cosmic phenomena.

Spitzer Space Telescope-infrared telescope that takes some stunning pictures of nebulae and early galaxies.

Not going to lie, I teared up when I saw this. Amazing.

AMERICA! To bad NASA no longer gets funded...

Panorama shot I took-sorry for the strange bulge.

Bottom of the shuttle-all of these tiles are individually labeled, cut, and placed.

Spacehab module for cargo storage

Gigantic "wing"

America at her absolute best.

.

Blog 25: Mentorship

Professor Mark B. Wise
wise@theory.caltech.edu

The most important skill I gained from my mentorship experience was confidence in my abilities. I have always felt overlooked when it comes to science and math, and I think that is partially a function of being a girl. Going into this project, I had no confidence in myself and assumed that everyone I talked to would think I was stupid or a waste of their time. I have had completely the opposite experience. Everyone I have met (particularly Professor Wise and Professor Polchinski) has been incredibly supportive, informative, and helpful. Without the encouragement I received from Professor Cheung and his postdoc, for instance, I highly doubt I would have felt confident enough to take my science project to the science fair or to present my findings to so many professionals. Without the experience I gained, I would never have found the guts to apply at the Griffith Observatory. I now feel much more comfortable taking risks in my thinking and pursuing and presenting new ideas. I know I have ideas that are worth listening to. If we want more women in science, I think girls need the encouragement I received to take risks and be confident in what they have to say. I know at I am good at physics, but I think I needed this experience to show me that I can step out of my comfort zone or think out of the box and come up with completely new ideas.

I met all of the people who have helped me answer my essential question through my mentor, Professor Wise. For example, he introduced me to Professor Sean Carroll who taught me about cloud chambers. This got me interested in methods of particle detection other than colliders and helped lead me to my third answer about dark matter. I could have found the answers to my essential question purely through research, but I would not have gotten the in-depth understanding of and perspective on the most pressing issues of physics that I received from Sean Carroll, Joe Polchinski, Clifford Cheung, and all of the others. By getting this, I was able to differentiate my answers and choose a best answer.

I plan on doing some more mentorship until the year is out.

Much thanks to Professor Wise for taking on a lowly high school student like myself.

Blog 24: Exit Interview Questions

(1) What is your essential question?  What is the best answer to your question and why?

My essential question is "Why is finding supersymmetric particles an important task for physicists to undertake?" My best answer to this question is, "Supersymmetry provides the most complete solution to the problem of the vacuum energy." I chose this as my best answer over all the others because the problem of the vacuum energy (also known as the quantum vacuum or the cosmological constant) is one of the oldest and most confounding unsolved problems in cosmology, and it is one that directly affects the longevity of the universe we live in. According to MIT physicist Max Tegmark in Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, an unstable vacuum means the universe has a much better chance of decaying into a lower energy state (as it did during the Big Bang.) If supersymmetry exists and we understand the method of supersymmetry breaking, this problem will be solved. 

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

Originally, I had wanted to focus on gravity in quantum mechanics and the unification of general relativity with quantum mechanics. However, after I read Leonard Susskind's The Cosmic Landscape and Lisa Randall's Warped Passages, I discovered that string theory cannot include gravity without the existence of supersymmetry. I decided that it was quite possible supersymmetry would provide solutions to other problems in physics and cosmology, so I decided to focus my senior project on it. I discovered that not only does supersymmetry complete string theory, it also resolves the Hierarchy Problem of the Standard Model, the problem of the vacuum energy, and it provides multiple candidates for dark matter that fit well with observations, as I discovered in the numerous papers I read for my science project. When I considered these problems and looked at the enormous cost of experiments dedicated to finding physics beyond the Standard Model, I decided the most important one was the problem of the vacuum energy. As of yet, it cannot be resolved without the existence of supersymmetry, and an unstable vacuum means our universe is due for another Big Bang-esque decay. If physicists do not find supersymmetric particles, they will have to dedicated their time to conceiving other theories to resolve this problem. 

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

There are almost no women in physics, so whenever I go to functions with my mentor at Caltech or when I hang out with physicists my own age, I feel sort of awkward. I wanted to find a female mentor, since I believe girls need positive female role models to encourage them to go into science and math, but that was nearly impossible. This isn't really a problem I can solve, for I am but a lowly high school student. In the future, I hope to be part of the solution and be a role model for young girls like myself. Also, I was in no way equipped to do the math, so I buckled down and taught myself calculus online and from a book, with help from the grad students at my mentorship. 

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

The two most important sources I used were my fourth interview with Joe Polchinski of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. He gave me the most in-depth analysis of superstring theory, supersymmetry and quantum gravity I had gotten. Before this interview I had ignored the problem of understanding supersymmetry breaking, but his explanation made me understand its significance. My second most important source was a paper called Implications of a 125 GeV Higgs for Neutralino Dark Matter in the MSSM by Howard Baer, Vernon Barger and Azer Mustafayev. Apart from being the first real technical paper I learned to decipher, this was the most current analysis of supersymmetric parameter space and its implications with the most accurate measurement of the Higgs mass. 

(5) What is your product and why?

I used to not understand why people dedicate their whole lives to studying the universe, which appeared to me as a cold, hostile, lifeless place. Why did no one care about our little swatch of the universe, where more and more terrible things seemed to be happening everyday? Now that I've done my science project and done all of this research, I understand what drives people to spend their whole lives in pursuit of discovery. I have greatly increased my own curiosity about the universe and, in doing so, broadened my view of life on Earth. I realize we are all pretty much the same-just recycled atoms from old stars that have grown sentient. I was afraid studying physics would turn me into Edward Teller or Werner Heisenberg, but instead I feel more like Erwin Schrodinger, who never let the turmoil of the 20th century interfere with his quest for discovery, or allowed his scientific ambitions to turn him away from the people in this world. I think if more people understood where we came from, the world would be a much more harmonious place. 

Enjoy this picture of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation courtesy of the Planck Satellite. This is the universe at the youngest we can see it. If you turn your radio to white noise, you can hear this buzzing about. The universe is talking to you!

Blog 23: 2014 Interview

1.  Who did you interview and what house are they in?
Jeremy Etheridge-I honestly have no idea what house he is in.

2.  What ideas do you have for your senior project and why?
J: EMT or something having to do with first aid, because that's what my dad does and I've always liked helping people.

3.  What do you plan to do for your summer 10 hour mentorship experience?
J: I plan on working with my dad.

4.  What do you hope to see or expect to see in watching the 2013 2-hour presentations?
J: I'm expecting to understand more about how exactly we are supposed to present it, because right now I really have no idea. I know we are supposed to be teaching a class, but I am hoping to see more of the specifics about what exactly will we be presenting on.

5.  What questions do you have that I can answer about senior year or senior project (or what additional information did you tell them about senior year or senior project)?
J: I've heard it's a lot of work.
H: It is, but as long as you manage your time well, you'll be fine. Like, they'll give a two-month deadline. You'll think that's a long time, but all of a sudden you'll figure out you have a week left to go and you will have done nothing. As long as you do a little bit everyday, maybe 10 minutes or so, it won't seem like that much work. 
J: How do the house competitions work?
H: Well, Mr. Purther sets those up. Sometimes it's capture the flag or kickball. Lately we've been playing word games and chess. Usually they happen on Friday, since we always seem to have a big chunk of downtime for some reason. Anyway, the house that wins gets one point and the winning house gets to go to grad night for free. Oh, and charity stuff is a house competition. For instance the house that donates the most cans gets a house point. 

Thank you Jeremy! Good luck in ASB next year! 

Blog 22: Final 3-Column Chart

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlCsYHBSZf56dHVlM0ZyNFVpeU1QTzBpbU5SZ3dCSmc#gid=0

Blog 21: Independent Component 2

I, Hannah Seymour, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

I first learned about cloud chambers from Caltech physicist Sean Carroll. He also taught me how to extract the tiny radioactive americium-241 disk from an ionizing smoke detector. For the experiment procedure I used this website: http://www.bizarrelabs.com/cloud.htm.

A cloud chamber is a very basic particle detector. To build a simple cloud chamber, you need a see-through container (I used a glass jar for science labs involving poisonous materials, as I was sure it would be radiation-safe,) very pure alcohol (I used 91% isopropyl rubbing alcohol,) a piece of blotter paper or sponge, a piece of black cloth, a block of dry ice, and a small radioactive piece. In this case, I used Fiestaware which contains uranium, and the americium from a smoke detector (if you want to try this, please use a broken smoke detector like I did.)

The cloth is glued to the bottom of the lid and the sponge is soaked in the alcohol. The radioactive source is placed in the lid and the jar is screwed upside-down onto it. Then the jar has to sit for 10-15 minutes or so. After that, the jar is placed lid-down onto the dry ice so the alcohol can saturate the jar and vaporize. After 15-20 minutes, when the jar becomes very cold, particle trails will begin to appear. A mist also forms and sinks to the bottom of the jar. Alpha particles leave heavy, dense trails and beta particles leave thin, wispy trails. This works because when a charged particle enters the chamber (from the radioactive source) it ionizes the vapor and produces a mist. There are so many ions produced around these relatively high-energy particles that when the vapor around them condenses a trail is left. 

The cloud chamber was one of the very first particle detectors and was used to discover muons and kaons among others. However, interestingly enough, today's high-tech dark matter searches actually utilize many of the same principles that the old-school cloud chamber does. For example, a popular type of experiment uses extremely pure, extremely cold germanium atoms in a controlled environment sealed off from the outside world, sometimes buried deep within an old abandoned mine. Theoretically, a dark matter WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) should hit these supercool germanium atoms, which are very still, and leave a trail in the form of it's interaction with the germanium by causing it to "move," in a sense. 

Supersymmetric particles are excellent candidates for WIMPs, and I believe the best way for them to be detected is through a dark-matter detection experiment like the germanium one. And if they are found in this way, we are well on the road to solving two of the most elusive problems in physics-dark matter and the existence and nature of supersymmetric particles. From this, I have the third answer to my essential question, "Why is finding supersymmetric particles an important task for physicists to undertake?" "Because supersymmetric neutralinos provide the most accurate candidate for Cold Dark Matter."

Cutting the sponge-diameter 6.5 cm

Sponge layer 

Completed parts-notice new lid

Set-up at school 

The Geiger counter goes nuts around these two

Fiestaware-don't handle with your bare hands!

Letting sit-right before I put it on the dry ice

Broken smoke detector

I had to take this apart wearing gloves

The americium is the tiny, tiny button resting on the center disk

Letting it sit before it goes on dry ice