BROADCASTS.com

Published: Jan. 21, 2008, 6:26 a.m.

In this episode, Dale talks with physicist Don Lincoln of the DZero detector experiment at Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratories. Don talks about physics, Fermilab, his books, and some opportunities for teachers and students with QuarkNet.
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\nPreview from the Show:
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Basler: Can you give\nus an overview of what the [Fermilab] does, and what the facility\u2019s goals are?

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Lincoln:\nMy own lab, Fermilab, accelerates protons\nand antimatter protons near the speed of light and collides them together. Fermilab\nhas some other programs also where we accelerate protons and smash the protons into\na target, which is usually some material - nickel or something. And from that, we extract other particles \u2013 which\ncould be neutrinos \u2013 which is what we\u2019re doing mostly - and experimenting with\nthose as well.\ufffd?
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\n\nBasler: What do you\nsay to the person that says \u201cI hated Physics\ufffd??

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Lincoln:\nWell I ask them why they hated physics.\nUsually they say \u201cwell, \u2018cuz it was too math oriented and it was difficult\ufffd?. And I say, \u201clet\u2019s talk about the world. Have\nyou ever wondered why the sun came up?\ufffd? or things like that. And usually I can get them to talk about some\naspect of the world that they\u2019re interested in, and show them that, in fact,\nthe study of physics really is interesting in that it explains an awful lot,\nand shows these interconnections that they might not be aware of.

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Basler: And you have a\nbook that could help out teachers\u2026 Tell us a little about that.

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Lincoln:\nWell actually I have two books. The first book\u2026was written intentionally for\npeople who come to my public lectures, because the people who come to the\nscience lectures are usually of course very enthusiastic about science, and they\u2019ve\nread many of the popular books. This particular\nbook that I wrote, was actually aimed at them, for those who wanted to go a\nlittle bit deeper. The second book is\nnot even out yet - it\u2019ll be out in the summer of 2008 \u2013 details the new accelerator\nthat is going to be turning on this year in Europe \u2013 the large hadron collider,\nand that one is also aimed at the general audience.

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Lincoln:\nHigh School teachers can join the QuarkNet\nprogram. They will then go and work with the researcher, for perhaps a week\nduring the summer, and get a sense of what research is going on. Then they bring that information back to\ntheir classrooms. And for many of the QuarkNet center - of which I think there are\n50 currently in the country - they get funded to bring high school students in\nthe laboratory to work for the summer \u2013 and they get paid to work even.

\n\n\n\nDon's Books:
\n"Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos"\n The target audience for this book is a lay audience of science\nenthusiasts. I had high school teachers in mind as I wrote it. Find it at Amazon.com.
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\nNew\nbook: "The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider" (name subject\nto change, will be out summer 2008.) Maybe it's just better to say\nthat the new book "describes in layman terms the exciting new research\nprogram about to start at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland."
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\nLinks from Don Lincoln:
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• http://particleadventure.org (just cool information about particle physics).
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• http://quarknet.fnal.gov (details quarknet and how to get involved.)
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• http://www.interactions.org/cms/ (a worldwide site for education and image resources)
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• http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/scied/PST/choose.htm laboratory opportunities
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• Slightly outdated database (geographically searchable): http://ed.fnal.gov/lasso/hep_search/search.html
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• Fermilab (Illinois) education office: http://ed.fnal.gov/index.shtml
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• Argonne (Illinois): http://www.anl.gov/Visiting/index.html
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• Brookhaven (Long Island): http://www.bnl.gov/education/
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• Jefferson Lab (Virginia): http://education.jlab.org/
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• Stanford (California): http://www-group.slac.stanford.edu/com/ed_educators.htm
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• Los Alamos (New Mexico): http://www.lanl.gov/education/
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• US Department of Energy (national) http://www.doe.gov/foreducators.htm
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• National Science Foundation (national): http://www.nsf.gov/news/classroom/physics.jsp
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• CERN (Europe) http://education.web.cern.ch/education/
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\n\n\nExperiments:
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• CMS: http://cmsinfo.cern.ch/outreach/index.html
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• ATLAS: http://atlasexperiment.org/students.html
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• LHCb: http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/
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• ALICE: http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/Public/
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• CDF: http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/
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• D0: http://www-d0.fnal.gov/
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