Community Service

It's finals week, which normally means people are extremely busy and stressed, studying for exams. I've never been the type to stress over exams, and while I'll do a bit of studying, I'm not particularly worried. But I am stressing and busy with something else-- the Tyson Project, as I have started thinking of it.

$40,000 is a lot of money, and expenses add a couple thousand to the total-- $50,000 is a very high guess, but a good number to start with. Always estimate high, and then not have to worry when things are more expensive than planned. And since I do not plan to count on ticket sales (even though I know I could), it's a very, very daunting number.

I talked with the Colorado regional coordinator for the SSA. He was initially optimistic, offering ideas of people to talk to about getting money, but then he talked with someone higher up and told me that he didn't think it was possible. He mentioned that the largest speaking fee his group had ever raised was $1,000, and that they had trouble with that. I am not going to let that stop me... but it does put it into perspective a bit.

Fortunately, I talked with my sister, and while she says that she finds the price offensive, she also offered some good advice about getting money. It's kind of her job, so I really appreciate the advice. The big thing that she mentioned today that is occupying my thoughts is this: people are more likely to give money to a group they have seen doing good for the community. Which makes a lot of sense-- get attention for and from the school, and we're more likely to get help from them (and others) with raising money.

The problem is, I'm not sure what big things we can do over the summer to get such attention. There are several things I can think of for service. The first is raising money to donate to a charity-- a worthy thing, but since we are going to be trying to get a lot of money for Tyson, I don't want to tap too much into people's funds before then. The second is to volunteer for an existing organization-- again, a worthy thing, but it won't get a lot of attention for our group. The third is what I am looking for-- something we can do on our own that will be good but not cost a lot of money, since we don't have a lot.

Ideally, I'd like to get a lot of people together for something big, something where we can get media attention. If a local news station-- or even a paper, or news website, but something official-- covers a service project of ours, we can point to it to show potential donors what we are about. But I don't know what.

I'd love to organize a small-scale version of Camp Quest, since starting one of those in the Denver area is one of our long-term goals. I don't know that we have the resources, and I can't be there during the day during the week, so I really doubt we could do it. But if we could it would be great.

Ugh. Need to have a brainstorming session, but getting people together for such a thing turns out to be fairly difficult.

O_O

As I said, last night I sent an email to Dr. Tyson's people inquiring about what it would take to get him here. 

This morning, I had a reply.

Not from Dr. Tyson-- I didn't expect he would see the message anyway-- but from the person who books his speaking engagements. He gave me his phone number and said I ought to call, he could answer my questions. I freaked out about that for a while-- I hate phones, and when it comes to contacting important people, I much prefer to have the time to compose my thoughts and agonize over my phrasing that email allows. But I did so.

It costs $40,000 to get Dr. Tyson to speak. 

Plus first class travel and expenses, of course. 

And the scary thing? We're actually going to try to make it happen.

Dr. Tyson is booked until next year, what with filming the new Cosmos series. In general, it's best to try to book him very far in advance anyway, I am told, because he gets hundreds of requests a year and can only do so many of them. So the fact that we had said spring at the earliest is actually fairly convenient. In fact, Dr. Tyson has an engagement in California on May 1, so if we wanted to book him the day before or after, it would cut down on travel costs. 

A couple of things make the very large number slightly less scary. Only half of it is due at the time the contract is signed, and even that might not be set in stone-- some schools, I am told, have a policy against paying advances. Mines is one such school, but they make exceptions for cases where it is industry standard to do so, so I'm not sure whether we will have to or not. The rest of the money-- or all of it, possibly-- is due the day after the event.

That's where the other one comes in: ticket sales. Our largest venue on campus seats 1100. I wish we had a larger-- it will be no trouble to sell that out completely. But if I set the ticket price at $20, that will cover more than half. And if I set it at $25... I don't want to set them that high, but I think I could. (Yes, $40 tickets would probably cover everything. I don't want to set the price that high-- I want students to be able to afford to go.)

However, as confident as I am of selling out our auditorium, I know I should not count on that money. Besides, it would be much better to have the ticket sale money to use for the future-- so I'm left with trying to raise $40,000. 

But like I said, the scary thing is that we're going to try. How amazing would that be? Not only being able to meet one of my idols, more personally because I'm an organizer for the event, but also the message it would send. A brand new group, able to raise that kind of money and get one of the most recognized scientists alive to come to our campus-- I wonder how much the Campus Crusade for Christ has ever raised for one thing? And if we can get the full amount before, we'd have $22,000 (or more!) to use for charitable donations and service. How much has the Fellowship of Catholic University Students ever donated in one big chunk? It's a petty, selfish sort of glee to think about being able to top those two-- among others-- in our first year of existence. 

By the way, if you have fundraising suggestions-- preferably ones that bring in a lot of money-- please offer them in the comments... we're going to need all the help we can get!

Yay, productivity!

Today was an awesome day.

I met with my officers today, and we discussed at great length the feedback we got from the brainstorming session last week. We made a lot of decisions, in terms of what we need to be doing before fall. In mostly chronological order:

We are going to have my VP talk to Phil Plait about speaking for us this fall. He has already offered to come speak to the astronomy club (that my VP is president of) for free, so we think this will not be too hard a sell. He will, we hope, be our big name speaker for the fall. We also decided there was no harm in trying to find out about getting Neil DeGrasse Tyson for the spring. I wrote an email to the "Request a Speaking Engagement" address on his website this evening, asking for information about bringing him in in the spring. Here's hoping!

The first big event we are concerned with is the Celebration of Mines, our fall club fair. I've ordered tabling supplies from the SSA, found a link about buying Darwin fish and other things in bulk, emailed the RDF about buying Out Campaign stuff in bulk, and my treasurer is going to talk to the person in charge of such things tomorrow to be sure we have a booth space reserved. We decided that instead of having people write their name and email on a list, we'll have them type it into a spreadsheet on my tablet-- no handwriting issues, and my tablet has enough battery to last through the day with no problems. We'd like to have event cards to give out-- that is, an index card or smaller sized thing that has information for the next event we are doing. We also talked about having people fill out surveys so we can get a better feel for the campus's attitudes, and about having some sort of game for giving away swag. We're not yet sure what we will do to attract attention, but we'll put some thought into it.

We talked for a while about other events-- debates we could host, movie nights, getting a group together to go to the Reason Rally next year-- and then moved onto service. We love the idea of helping with Jeffco's Outdoor Lab program, and reaching out to the Girl Scouts (but NOT the Boy Scouts-- they allow neither gays nor atheists). In the nearer future, we'd like to help clean the campus-- pick up trash, mostly-- and donate to the food bank, or a similar organization. Those are simple things to get started in, and if we're going to reach Tier 3, we have to do at least 3 service events a year.

Then we moved onto education, and started talking about my VP's pet project. He wants to collect videos of people talking about how they came to be atheist/agnostic/humanist/whatever label they wear, and put them online somehow. It's rather nebulous at this point, but this does make it very convenient that our faculty adviser is also in charge of the AV Club. I decided to find out about what it might cost to get a more professional website set up; a friend is researching that for me now.

Fundraising is always a challenge; we have decided that our big event is going to be an annual Flying Spaghetti Monster Dinner. Buy a plate, get spaghetti and a raffle ticket (more raffle tickets can be purchased at an additional cost) and some kind of entertainment. Servers will dress as pirates, naturally. We're thinking this should happen in November; we've already decided that there will be a committee for it.

Finally we talked about other groups we could cooperate with. Sigma Lambda (the local GLBT group) came up again, as well as APO-- I am told they do a lot of philanthropy, and would be happy to work with us. We also talked about gradually taking over the newspaper-- apparently a few years ago they were all super conservative and Christian. This has improved, but it's about time we got another voice in the paper.

As the meeting wound down and we talked about committees, we got a little silly. The committees would all have excessive names:
- Fundraising: There's Always Money in the Banana Stand Committee
- FSM Dinner: The Committee Touched By His Noodly Appendage
- Outreach: Really, We Don't Eat Babies
- Events: Cool People Doing Cool Things
- Planning: Hindsight Is 20/20, Foresight Should Be 20/20
- Executive (officers): Committee for Investigation of Recursive Committees

Then we made a to-do list, which I have already made a good start on. All in all, a very productive day.

Ask An Atheist Day! (Part 2)

Today was Ask An Atheist day, as I mentioned in yesterday's post. It began, for me, last night, when I posted about it on facebook and invited people to ask me anything. What an interesting experience!

I had a few people ask sincere, curious questions, which are nice, and often lead to good conversations. In fact, most of the questions I was asked led to good conversations, actually. I did have some flippant questions-- my favorite being a fellow atheist asking, grinning from ear to ear, how we explain the banana. If you've not heard it, there's a very silly creationist argument that says the banana is so perfectly designed for human consumption that it must have had a creator. Which it does-- man. The banana, in its original form, is nigh inedible; through careful, directed breeding, it became the sweet, seedless fruit we know today.

But mostly I had some very good conversations, starting in a chatroom last night with a friend asking me sincerely about my beliefs. I don't recall all of the questions, but they were good ones, and it was a good opportunity to hone my answers for the challenges that came later.

When I posted to facebook, I began getting questions almost immediately, but the interesting ones started this morning. It turns out one of my facebook friends, who has a PhD in physics, is a young earth creationist. He believes that evolution would violate the second law of thermodynamics, and thus is impossible. He also believes that the laws of physics do not allow the earth or the universe to be as old as scientists claim. He posted in great detail, and so I took time to address each of his points, doing my best to remain polite (even though I kind of wanted to scream). In the end, he thanked me for my replies, and bowed out of the discussion-- I count that as a win.

Then, of course, there was the table today. I got there at eleven to begin setting up, though we were scheduled to begin at noon. We were already collecting people's contact information and answering questions by 11:45, and while there was some down time, we had a very successful day. Got the word out about the group, had a lot of people thank us for starting it, even had one guy take a picture of us and post it on reddit-- go upvote us!

Then, of course, there were the conversations, many of them with Christians. I was in class when a bible study group came by and offered printed out bible verses, which makes me a little sad, that would have been fun. But I was there when two Catholics came by a little later. The girl began by asking "Who created you?" in a somewhat mocking tone, so I gave her a flippant answer-- my parents. She kept asking "Who created them?" so I kept answering "Their parents" until someone stepped in and started talking with her about the origins of life. At this point her companion had a question of his own, so I stopped paying attention to her for a bit, but she eventually asked about saints whose bodies were supposedly perfectly preserved (we looked them up and found that they were not, and that there were perfectly legitimate reasons for the imperfect preservation that was present), that she claimed had been examined by "atheist scientists" who found no scientific reason, which meant it had to be a miracle.

At this point her companion and I were talking about martyrs. His question was simply "What about all the people who have died for God? Why would they do that if God wasn't real?" I told him that it made perfect sense for them to die for something if they believed in it, to which he replied that they wouldn't believe in it that much if it were fake. So I asked him about people who had died for things he didn't believe in... he didn't have a reply to that, and after that, the conversation was much less confrontational, and we started talking about the meaning of life, and other such philosophical quandaries. By the time he left, he seemed very thoughtful. They were both very friendly-- everyone I spoke to today was.

All in all, it was a very good day, and I am very glad that we did this.

Ask An Atheist Day!

Tomorrow (4/19) is National Ask An Atheist Day. There are a lot of misunderstandings about what atheists are, what they believe, and why, and this event is an attempt to correct that.

To use a personal example, here are some quotes from a conversation I have been having recently on facebook:

• ...while Atheism/Naturalism cannot fully fit the description of a religion (which is a word of considerable vagueness) it does rise to the level of a Quasi-religious worldview, postulating answers to the questions: Is there a God? How should we live? Is there life after death? What is our place in the universe? How are we related to other creatures? And the answers it gives are not based on conclusive reasoning, but require a faith in that particular worldview because reason is itself a matter of faith.
• The only response to ... Atheism would be a meaningless madness, deadening apathy, and suicidal insanity. 
• Now, if I was less consistent in my Atheism, I could try to sneak in some things which would allow for more sanity, joy, and hope in life. I could claim that Reason was reliable in spite of the lack of support and even contradictions to the consequences of starting from a materialist philosophy. I could claim that relationships matter. I could borrow ideas of order and objective truth and infuse them into my claims about the universe. All inconsistent with my Atheism, but who cares?
• If there is no God then evidence suggests that I have no reason to believe in reason, morality, free will, the veracity of my experiences or anything else.
• I know you say you wonder at the universe... But I live in a wonder-filled one.
• "The believer is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle." It seems obvious to me which are the free thinkers.

... the whole conversation has been incredibly frustrating, starting with his ideas of what an atheist really is (in spite of him not being an atheist himself). It frustrates me that everyone has their own idea of what it means when I say that I'm an atheist... and that they often do not listen when I correct them. Theists-- that is, people who are not atheists-- have some really odd ideas about what it means to be an atheist, and some even stranger ones about what it implies. 

In any case, for the entirety of the day, I'll answer any questions I am asked-- preferably about atheism, but silly questions are fun, too. We're setting up a table in the student center on campus tomorrow, hopefully we'll get a lot of interest, answer some good questions, start some good conversations.

And actually, as long as this blog post is up, I'll answer questions in the comments, too. :)

Huzzah!

Well, today's meeting was a rousing success. We had roughly thirty-five people show up, none of whom left after grabbing a slice of pizza.

Naturally, I was nervous. In fact I spend twenty of the last thirty minutes leading up to the meeting freaking out, walking off nervous energy and telling myself it was silly to worry that we would only have three people, we had at least nine, from last Tuesday's meeting. It was also silly, I tried telling myself, to worry that I was either going to bore or offend every person that did show up. But telling myself something doesn't make me believe it.

Of course, when I got back to the lecture hall ten minutes before the meeting and found well over a dozen people already seated, most of those fears melted away. Not so for my treasurer, who apparently was worried a crazy fundamentalist was going to take advantage of their new right to conceal carry on campus and express their opinion of us with bullets. But then, he's from Texas, that's to be expected.

I'm going to be honest; it made me kind of happy when a person from the "Progressive Religious Orediggers" (who are associated with a local unitarian church) said she wanted to associate with us... and also said that she had practically no student interest. I'll be good, and we'll work with them, but it made me a little happy that my group was doing better.

I had two people immediately volunteer to be secretary, just after the meeting, and there was a lot of interest in another general meeting, so we've scheduled one two weeks from today, same time, same place. We think we're going to see if there's a faculty member or local speaker we can bring in. And there was a lot of interest in the Ask An Atheist table as well, for next Thursday. I've got some things to do on Orgsync, following today's meeting.

On top of all of that, we ended up with just about the perfect amount of pizza.

Everything really came together today-- on a personal note, I got registered, so I'm not worried about that anymore, and now I can focus on studying for my next physics exam, on Tuesday. But mostly for the group. Everything went really well, and I couldn't be happier.

It's (almost) official!

On Thursday, I and a couple others from my group met with Dr. Shorey, who was interested in being our faculty advisor. Dr. Shorey is probably my favorite professor that I have yet met at Mines. He's a paleoclimatologist who teaches in the Geology department, and I am so fond of his teaching method that I went out of my way to have him again this semester. He uploads all his lecture powerpoints to his website-- but a lot of professors do that. He also has a podcast series for every topic he lectures on-- if you miss a class, you can go and listen to the lecture. Best of all, he has a list of objectives for every subject, things that might apper on the test. He talks a lot about things that are not objectives, and many of these things are fascinating, but having the objectives makes note-taking and studying vastly easier. But none of these are why I like him so much. I like him because he is incredibly enthusiastic about what he does. I love it.

So Dr. Shorey was interested in being our advisor. He runs the AV club, offered to help us do podcasts, or take videos of speakers to share. He has some great ideas about speakers and discussions we can have. He brought the same enthusiasm to us that he brings to the classroom. This makes me very happy; having a faculty advisor who is so enthusiastic and so on board will make this all very much easier. So we got him to sign our paperwork, and I turned it in that afternoon.

Less than an hour later I had an email to set up our orgsync page. Orgsync is the website that all student groups are encouraged to use for organization, scheduling, and such. I got it set up, created events for our upcoming meeting and for Ask An Atheist Day, invited all the group members for which I had contact info. I also set up a twitter account for us (@SSACSM), and through orgsync, set up a website.

We will hopefully be made official on tuesday, that being the next time the student board meets, and they need to approve our application. I submitted the application to officially affiliate with the SSA, with a note that we were not yet official but would be, soon. We've got the lecture hall reserved for our introductory meeting on Thursday, and fliers are up advertising it. I've been working on my presentation/talk for that meeting. I've also found out who I need to talk to in order to set up a table for Ask An Atheist Day.

I said it before, but I will say it again: here we go!

Critical (thinking) failure

I love my school, but sometimes, I hate the students here.

I understand how it happens. They were the really smart ones in school. They were never challenged. They could just coast, and get their stright A's. Or maybe they were just the ones who knew really well how to play the game, and get the A's. Either way, they never had to think, never had to try to learn things. Their teachers were so busy making sure the lowest common denomintor got through that these kids just skated by. And now they're here, and they don't know how to think.

I see it in all of my classes. Last year I had to teach kids who had taken geometry far more recently than I to use their compass, because the teacher had only explicitly explain one of the six problems. In my math and physics classes, people were taught mnemonic and memorized formulas, and they never quite managed the theory. I don't blame their teachers; it is very hard to get people who don't care to learn the theory when they could just memorize.

Today I've heard so many I want to scream. First, my teacher is talking about "cubic feet per second" and then he starts saying "cfs" and people can't figure that out. Though to be fair, that was just the one idiot that I wonder how he even got into this school. Then we're supposed to plot data points, draw a line of best fit, and answer some questions. It makes sense to answer the questions using the line, and it makes none to do otherwise. And still half the class asked, rather than stopping a moment to think it through.

I think perhaps this SSA club is going to have to work really hard to get people to start using reason and critical thinking. *sigh*

Space!

... industry, that is.

One of the many things that makes my school such a special place is that we have recruiters looking to hire students as interns, part-time, and full-time, at all times, and at all levels. There are events at least weekly for different industries and companies, and our online job search/application engine is updated daily, with almost universally industry-related positions. No retail or food service jobs on DiggerNet, save the on-campus ones.

So today there was a workshop about finding and getting jobs in the aerospace, DOD, and aviation industries. Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SEAKR Engineering had representatives there to tell us how to stand out among applicants, and what they each had to offer. First of all, I love that campus recruiters come to Mines to sell themselves to the students. They know we're the best, they want us. It's great.

Second, I find it amusing that even though the event said it was also for DOD (that's 'department of defense' if you were wondering) and aviation, everyone there-- organizers, campus recruiters, and students alike-- knew that we were all there because SPACE. One of the ULA guys even put it that way: "Why would you want to go into mining when you could be working in space?" It amused me, and rocketed (pardon the pun) ULA much higher on my list of people to seek internships/employment with in the future.

Again and again, the recruiters told us that while CU Boulder has an Aerospace Engineering department and Mines does not, they would much rather hire a Mechanical or Electrical Engineer from Mines than the Aerospace Engineer from CU. Again and again, we were told that they didn't care if you had a 4.0 (though below a 3.0 and you're SOL), so long as you had shown leadership and teamwork and enthusiasm. Again and again, we were told that we should start networking early, so that when we are ready to graduate the hiring managers already know who we are.

And I thought: yeah, I've got a pretty good chance. I'm at Mines. I'm the founding president of a campus organization, involved with another that has ties to a national professional organization, and I am extremely excited not only by space, but by pretty much everything I do. And I've still got a few years left. So I decided I should ask a question, put myself out there, make sure they at least notice that I am there. In retrospect, what I asked was probably a very good question, indeed.

I was, in fact, the first student to volunteer a question, which looks good enough on its own. What I asked was simple: I am majoring in Engineering Physics. This is not strictly an engineering degree; it's a BS instead of a BE. As a result, it is sometimes hard to find job listings at companies like those present today. What kind of opportunities did they each have for someone in my program?

This made some of them a little uncomfortable, I fear. Several of them told me, either then or later, that they loved Engineering Physics majors, we were better qualified than engineers from other schools and more able to think abstractly about a problem than many engineers. One of the ULA reps told me that he thought it was a mistake that they had not opened their internships to physics majors this year, and he hopes that is corrected in the future. A guy from the space research center on our campus told me that he thinks engineering physics people are his best employees.

But the crowning glory was the rep from Lockheed Martin. She, again, was a little uncomfortable, because not only did she feel that there were plenty of opportunities for those in my major, she also did not know any of them off the top of her head. So she gave me her card and asked me to contact her; she would ask one of the hiring managers what I might look for and what I could do to stand out as an applicant. She asked whether I had applied for any of the internships this year, even, as they do hire as young as freshmen. I told her no, but that I would likely be looking next summer.

Before the ULA has an info session next week, I believe I will attempt to create a resume to give to them.

E-days!

Today was the carnival, with the cardboard boat race and the soapbox derby and-- most awesomely-- the trebuchet contest. I thought about trying to get one built, but I realized that two weeks was not enough time, and that though they would reimburse me for building materials, I really didn't have the money either. I think I will do one next year.

The weather couldn't have been better for it, bright and sunny but not overly hot-- I wish I had brought sunscreen, though, as I am somewhat burnt now-- and the whole day was a lot of fun. We did not go to the boat race, but got there in time to see the trebuchets doing their calibration shots. There were seven or eight of them, mostly traditionally designed, some floating arm, and one... well. They called their machine "Ambitious Rubbish" and it was certainly that, but it was my favorite of them. It broke half the time they tried to fire it, but dammit, they had come up with an original design. Most of the others could have been build from downloaded plans.

A quick lesson on trebuchets: A trebuchet has two important features, a counterweight and a throwing arm. Most are built, as they were historically, so that the counterweight is on one end of a long, rotating beam, and a sling is attached to the other end. The counterweight is raised, and the sling loaded, and then the counterweight will be released. The counterweight is usually something like sixty times the weight of the ammunition, and so it whips the throwing arm around, flinging the ammunition with a lot of force. A floating arm trebuchet has one rather important change: the counterweight is not attached to the end of the throwing arm. Instead, it is allowed to fall straight down. These are much harder to build, but have a better power output because less energy is lost.

"Ambitious Rubbish" had taken the idea of the floating arm, but had not built it on a vertical track like most. It had a counterweight that dropped vertically, and a separate throwing arm (which had been constructed rather strangely to accomodate the elaborate pulley system they used to raise the counterweight), but in many respects it looked more like a traditional trebuchet. They also had all their power tools, duct tape, and extra wood, in case they needed to repair it... which they did, several times. It pulled itself apart, hit itself with its own counterweight, and, when they did manage a launch, the box they had been using as a counterweight broke from the weight that was in it. They only launched successfully twice, and one of their misfires went backward into the crowd. (Several others had that problem as well, one of them breaking irreparably in the process. This one wasn't the worst of them, just the most interesting.) But I liked it, because the team had actually tried to do something new, on their own.

The best one, of course, was one of the floating-arm types, which probably had a lot more money and time and skill put into its construction.

The competition was interesting, too-- most of the time, such contests are about distance only, seeing who can launch something the farthest. Not ours. Instead, they are given a target, and the target will be set at five different distances. So the trebuchets had to be built for accuracy instead of just distance, and had to be adjutable. Adjusting a trebuchet's distance is fairly easy-- change the weight of the counterweight. Knowing how MUCH to change it is a bit harder, so even the best team didn't hit the mark every time. More often than any other, though. They also had the fastest reset, and in general just seemed to know what they were doing more than anyone else. But they were not my favorite. Competence is great, but it's not always as fun to look at.

After the trebuchet launch we wandered a bit, saw what else was going on. At the soapbox derby there was a car made of a kayak, and one with a couch on it, and one that had its own stereo system. They had brought in donkeys for some kind of obstacle course-- the Burro being our mascot, that makes some sense. There was a mining competition we didn't go check out, but for which there was an ambulance waiting, just in case. There were little carnival games of all sorts, set up by various campus groups. There were inflatable carnival games. In lieu of the large set up where you try to hit something with a hammer hard enough to ring the bell, the geophysics kids had brought out a thing that sensed sound waves through the ground, and used an oscilloscope to measure how hard you'd hit. There was face painting, and free food for students, and cotton candy. And there was of course beer, provided by Coors, for a dollar a glass. Oh, and there was a car show, elsewhere on campus.

All in all, it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I actually went this year.

LASERS

You know what is really cool? LASERS.

I put that in all caps for two reasons. One, not everyone knows (or remembers) that the word "laser" was originally an acronym. It stood for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Of course, it has become a word-- everyone knows what a laser is, and it's perfectly fine, grammatically, to write it just like that. I write it in all caps, mostly, because lasers are FREAKING COOL.

Everyone has seen, probably even used, a laser. Laser pointers are common technology (though when I was a kid and desperately wanted one, they were at least $50, I checked), CDs and DVDs are read by laser, barcodes are scanned by laser-- lasers are everywhere. The laser sight on a sniper rifle is such a well known piece of technology that a red dot appearing on someone in a movie is an instant source of tension-- that person is going to be shot!

The scientific uses for lasers are even cooler. The distance from the earth to the moon is measured by bouncing a laser off a reflector left by one of the Apollo missions. Lasers are used in microscopes to image extremely small things with great accuracy. Lasers can cut more precisely than any mechanical process. Lasers can perform surgery where no incision is necessary. They're used in spectroscopy, which is a really cool concept on its own.

So how do they work? Fairly simply, actually. You pump light into a medium that will amplify it, and then focus it out one end as a beam. Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds. You have to find the right medium so the wavelength that you want is amplified, you have to use an external power source, and so on. But really: create a tube, with mirrors on both ends, so light will reflect. Fill it with a gain medium-- it could be as simple as glass or neon, like a neon light, mixed with helium-- and then introduce a light source. For some, it could be an electrical pulse, like the helium-neon mix. For others it's a light, or a chemical reaction. It depends on what you're using as a gain medium. Make sure that one of the end mirrors is partially transparent, so the amplified light can go somewhere, and you've got a laser. Many will then put a cap on the end so that the light can only go out through a small hole, making the beam small and focused.

So, one of the really cool things about studying physics at this school is that there are a lot of opportunities to play with lasers. All of the labs on the top floor of the physics building have warnings posted on the doors about lasers. And we have some really, really cool lasers. We've got one setup that's doing microscopy-- that is using a laser as a microscope-- that literally counts photons, yielding a much clearer picture than other systems that amplify to that degree. They've got one that can give a 3 dimensional image of a fly's brain. But the coolest one is the one doing something unexpected.

They created a setup that focuses a beam in four dimensions-- that is, in the three spatial dimensions, and also in time. If you're not used to thinking of time as a dimension that's going to either sound nonsensical or extremely simple. In practice it is neither; this was quite an accomplishment. So they did what any good physicist would do with a brand new, very cool laser: they pointed it at stuff. One of the things they pointed it at was glass. Glass is an interesting thing-- it is structurally the same in all directions, because it doesn't have any sort of crystallization. It's kind of an amorphous blob, really. So, one would expect that, when carving things into it with lasers, the direction the laser was moving wouldn't matter-- the whole area touched by the laser is affected the same way. Generally, that's true. Not with this one. With this one, they get one kind of mark when moving to the left, and an entirely different kind of mark moving to the right. The conclusion they came to: their laser is somehow tiled in TIME. One side of the laser is hitting the glass slightly before the other. And they do not know why. So now there's a senior design project trying to take pictures of this phenomenon. And succeeding. At taking pictures of LASERS.

My school is awesome.