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