For this year’s USA Summer Camp, the stars seemed to be aligned just for us, and we managed to secure reservations to a very unique field trip: a visit to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, or Berkeley Lab for short. Berkeley lab is a national lab located right off the main university campus that conducts scientific research on behalf of the United States Department of Energy, and is managed and maintained by the University of California. It was founded by Ernest Lawrence, one of the Nobel Prize winners who served on the university’s faculty, and it bears his name.
The complex is home to 100 buildings on 200 acres of land. Many major scientific breakthroughs have occurred here, including the discovery of 16 elements. We were given a guided tour by on-site research scientists of the Molecular Foundry and the Advanced Light Source.
The Molecular Foundry is one of five nanoscience research centers in the United States, and houses a lot of specialized equipment including an electron microscope:
Yeah, I don’t think this was what anyone was expecting when they said we were going to see a microscope that is capable of examining things on the minutest scale. All we got to see was the housing of the electron microscope, and the dark grey panel is a door where you put your sample in to be examined. But, we did get to see some other cool facilities:
But the main attraction at Berkeley Lab would have to be the domed building at the Advanced Light Source that houses the cyclotron. The cyclotron was the brainchild of Ernest Lawrence, and the original hand-held model is still on display at the nearby Lawrence Hall of Science. It is an accelerator that generates high energy electrons that give of different wavelengths of light as they zoom around the circular ring at near the speed of light. These different wavelengths are harnessed and used for different scientific experiments by researchers who come here from all around the world. Here are some photos of our group inside the domed building and looking down at the cyclotron:
And for all those who are history buffs, there is even an old photo of Ernest Lawrence and other staff members of the cyclotron taken from way back when stuck onto one of the beams right where we were:
The visit was a very interesting and highly educational one for the students, and it showed them the kind of research that goes on behind the scenes of our retail products. I certainly hope it gave them a greater appreciation of all the things that we are able to enjoy in our world today, and not to take everything for granted.