Sarah Phillips

Homeward Bound

I am off to New Hampshire again tomorrow!  My cousin Jeff is marrying his beloved, Sue, on Saturday, so I am heading up to New England to celebrate with the rest of my family.

I am really excited about this trip and the wedding.  I have been looking wistfully out my window and thinking about how nice it would be to be outside, so a few days spent with my family in New England will really be welcome.  Jeff and Sue are very happy together, and it will be fun to celebrate with them.

So, you won't hear from me for a few days, but I will post about my adventures when I return.  :)

(Photo credit: This is not my photo.  I wish that it was!  I just posted it here since I wanted a picture of New Hampshire in this post, and because pictures are worth a thousand words, and this is a really lovely one of New Hampshire.  The photograph was taken by Bob Reed in September, 2000, along the Swift River, north side of the Kancamagus Highway, in the White Mountains National Forest.  Here's the link to the photo gallery I obtained it from on newhampshire.com.)

Birthday Wishes

Tomorrow is Jason's birthday (the Jason M. from my summer trip), and since I will be traveling most of the day tomorrow, I am taking this opportunity to wish him a happy birthday a day early.  Happy Birthday, Jason!

I am surrounded by birthdays in my office right now too.  Julie's birthday was last week (happy birthday again!), and Vipuli's is this weekend.  Paul's birthday is also this week, on Friday.  We will have to do some celebrating when I return from New Hampshire next week.  Happy birthday everyone!  :)

Wine and Cheese

This past weekend a cherished W&M physics department event was held: a wine and cheese party.  I have always loved this particular departmental social function because in addition to being a time to sample all sorts of different wines and cheeses, it is an opportunity for me to meet the new graduate students who have joined the department (since I am usually at Jefferson Lab, I do not generally see them in the department).  I also have the opportunity to hang out with all my classmates and scheme all sorts of things for the upcoming semester.  As an added bonus, since the event is usually held at the house of one of the physics professors, I get to check out their houses and libraries (and their taste in art).  :)

I have included below a photograph of my friend Josh (who taught me to play hockey on our team, and who is in the class ahead of mine) and his girlfriend Melanie.  Keoki and I are in the other photograph.  They are really cool people who are lots of fun to hang out with, and Keoki had even spent some time that afternoon giving me another Frisbee-throwing lesson.  One of these days, I might even become good at that.  :)

Well, I had a marvelous time enjoying the wine, cheese, and company.  I met several of the new graduate students, got to know some of the second and third-year students better, and plotted and schemed with my friends and classmates.  It was an evening well spent.  :)

My Little Elephant

My lovely officemate Vipuli has returned from her vacation visiting her family in her native Sri Lanka!  She came back to work (she is a Hall C postdoc here at Jlab) last Thursday despite the jet lag, filled with wonderful stories of the fun things she did while she was there and bearing gifts for Julie and I from the island.  Among other things, she brought me an adorable little carved wooden elephant.  Here is a picture of the elephant on my windowsill in my office at Jefferson Lab.  I am trying to think of a really good name for my little elephant right now.  Does anyone have any good suggestions as to a good name for such a cute little pachyderm?

Vipuli also brought me a postcard that has quite stylishly attired elephants on it.  I have included a scanned image of it below since it is such a lovely picture (thanks to Mary Beth Stewart for scanning that for me).  I wonder how they train the elephants to wear all that fabric on their faces?  My beagle would only wear a bandana without looking grouchy about it.

Vipuli had a really great time visiting her family.  It is so good to have her back here, though.  I have missed her!

Almost Famous

Whoo!!  There is another sighting of me that has been reported!  For those of you who don't keep track of the comments on my blog, Del posted that he found an article about me in Physorg.com!  It is a copy of the W&M news story, which I so enjoyed doing the interview for.  Pretty cool!  :)  I admit that I feel pretty pleased that I made it onto the Jlab in the News page.  That must be a milestone of some sort.  :)

G0 is enjoying some more press as well.  An article about G0 has appeared in both the Physical Review Focus and Physorg.com, as well as a little summary in Nature as one of the Nature Research Highlights.  I am pretty excited about that too.  It is so much fun to see all the hard work pay off and then get to see it talked about.  G0 is in the Jlab monthly newsletter On Target this month as well (I am too, since it reports on the results of the poster contest).

HAPPEx has also gotten some limelight with an article in Physics World (and I am signed for more shifts on this experiment in the coming month too).

This is all quite fun.  Maybe I will get my chance to be in Time magazine yet...  :)

The Most Beautiful Physics Experiments

My officemate Julie told me today about this article she knows of that lists the "most beautiful experiments" in physics, which sounded just too intriguing to not check out.  So I did, and here is a link to the article so that you can also find out what the most beautiful physics experiments are.

I have to say that I agree with most of the experiments that are listed here; they are all simply elegant, and I remember doing some of them myself in physics labs my junior and senior years as an undergraduate.  (Well, except for Millikan's oil-drop experiment.  I remember doing that one, and it did not seem so beautiful at the time...)  I am pretty tickled that Wu et al.'s measurement of parity violation made it into the list of honorable mentions too.  :)

Pretty cool.  Maybe I should start planning out my own beautiful physics experiment.  Or maybe I should just finish writing my beautiful thesis first...  Heh...  :)

Busy as a Bee

I know that I have not been babbling as much in my blog as usual lately, but I have been busy as a bee these last few weeks.  I have been:

1. Cheerfully wrecking my analysis code
2. Not-so-cheerfully wrecking my LaTex code for my thesis (yup, it won't compile right now)
3. Playing catch up with some entries
4. Moving flower pots around for Ophelia, who happily did not visit us after all.
5. Talking to my mother and brothers, who are all located at my mother's winter home in Mississippi and at Mississippi State University right now, but who happily all made it through Katrina without any problems.
6. Fun and games: I have been learning to throw a Frisbee properly and play Frisbee golf with Keoki and Mike (Keoki is one of my friends and classmates in the physics department, and Mike is a cool friend of Keoki's that graduated from W&M last year).
7. And finally, the W&M physics department's Open House and new Magnet Lab Dedication last Friday.  (Here are links to articles when the new lab was being built and when the new magnet arrived.)  I was there showing my pretty G0 posters with the other physics graduate students who were showing posters about their research to all the College dignitaries (and enjoying the chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne).  :)
   

    

So I have clearly not been idle these last few weeks.

Today promises to be a great day.  My lovely officemate Vipuli is back today, after her vacation to visit her home in Sri Lanka.  I have also un-wrecked my code this afternoon, the problems being a hard-to-track indexing mistake and a classic fencepost error (writing past the end of an array), mistakes which I seem to be singularly good at doing.  You would think that one of these days I would learn not to make those sorts of coding mistakes, but oh well.  Maybe that's when they give you a Ph.D., when you figure out how to avoid all those sorts of dumb mistakes.  Anyway, I say that the code is "un-wrecked" because it now runs without crashing, but I still have to check that it is doing everything the way I think I told it to.  Then I will pronounce it repaired!  And then I will really feel like I am making progress. 

It is great to have Vipuli back!  :)  Her presence alone makes this a great day!  Welcome back!  :)

Playing Catch Up

Okay, so I have been delinquent in posting some of my blog entries.  I half finished them, got tired since it was usually rather late, and then postponed them, fully intending to finish them the next day when I was not so tired, but never completely did so due to busy schedules, owl shifts, hurricanes, and so on.  So here are the ones that I have FINALLY finished off in the past week or so:

The last entry of my honeybee-keeping series.  This one uncovers the great mystery of how people get the honey out of all those little cells in the honeycomb.

My Gordon Conference Photos.  Yes, I finally managed to select the pictures to post!  And I even have a couple of Peter Steinberg in there...

My trip home to lovely New Hampshire.

My vacation and triumphant return to Virginia! (Yeah, I came back...bad pennies always return...)

My friend Cherry's defense two weeks ago.

Okay, I am now caught up for the moment.  Maybe I'll even stay caught up for a bit...

Bright, Sunny Day!

Happily, today is a bright and sunny day, and so far quite hurricane-free here.  No rain yet, just really humid and a little breezy...  It appears that Ophelia has decided not to visit today and is still sitting off the coast of North Carolina.  With any luck she won't visit at all!

Hurricanes don't really hit the area around Jefferson Lab very often, but the last hurricane, Isabel, caused some significant damage and knocked the power out long enough that that accelerator's superconducting cavities warmed up since the lab's liquid helium refrigerator was not running during that time.  That happened two years ago, during the G0 installation in Hall C.  I remember being worried about what sort of delay that would cause for my thesis experiment, but it all worked out well in the end, and the lab recovered rapidly from the storm damage.

Today, my living room is filled with all my potted plants that usually live outside bordering the pathway to my front door, so my house has an odd jungle-like ambiance that I have come to associate with poor weather in the area.  Maybe I will transfer them all back to their outdoor positions tonight...

Hurricane Ophelia Preparations

Hurricane (or sometimes tropical storm, depending on her mood) Ophelia cannot seem to make up her mind whether to make landfall or not, and since one of the predicted paths of the storm would bring the maelstrom close enough to this area to cause damage, Jefferson Lab is in a state for hurricane readiness.  (In the picture to the right, Jlab is just northwest of the "N" for Norfolk.)  Tonight before I go, I am supposed to make sure that things are secured, turned off and unplugged in case of the storm taking an unfavorable path in this direction tonight.    So, I may not have the opportunity to post anything tomorrow, but if that is the case, I will surely post on Friday. 

I'll chat with you all then!

In the News

I am feeling pretty happy today.  For one thing, G0 and Jefferson Lab appeared in a story in The Economist, which is pretty cool.  Well, I guess that any article ought to have some coolness points just for having a title like "Strange Behaviour".  :D

Also, the story about me and the Quantum Diaries just appeared in the William and Mary News!  I am very excited about it.  It is fun to be in the school news, and I really like the idea that I may be helping to change the stereotypical image of physicists as geeks, even though I actually did blush at the suggestion. :D  I hope that more people will become interested in the coolness of physics.

Tonight, I am helping my friend Cherry move (she successfully defended her dissertation yesterday), along with a bunch of the other people in the department.  She is moving to Tennessee, to start a post-doctoral position at Oak Ridge.  I am sad to see her leave, but I am also really excited for her as she begins the next stage of her career.

However, I am glad that is it Friday!  I have not managed to completely readjust to a more normal day-time schedule after my week of owl shifts, so I am happy that the weekend is coming so that I can catch up on some much-needed sleep. 

Another Friend's Defense!

This has been a busy week for the physics department at William and Mary!  Yesterday afternoon my friend Cherry successfully defended her dissertation (her research is in computational condensed-matter physics).  She gave a really nice talk and then handled the committee's and the audience's questions with ease.  As we always do here, a large group of all her graduate student friends gathered and took up residence in the back of the large room where her defense was taking place, so that we could cheer her on and lend moral support to our friend with our presence, but she did not really need us at all!  :)  It is always cool to see friends reach this last important milestone to getting the Ph.D. 

That night, Cherry's advisor Shiwei Zhang (who incidentally taught my graduate quantum courses when I came to William and Mary and is a cool guy) threw a party for Cherry to celebrate her successful defense.   I completely forgot to bring my camera with me, but my friend Wirawan (a postdoc working for Shiwei and a former graduate student here) was there taking pictures, so I got some pictures from him of the party.

It was a great evening.  Everyone was really happy for Cherry, who is one of the sweetest people ever.  She is originally from Thailand, but she is heading to Oak Ridge at the end of the week to start a postdoctoral position there.  I am so sad to think that she is leaving!  Everyone had gifts and hugs for her.  Here is a picture of she and Vince and the little Hello Kitty stuffed animal he gave her.

There were lots of people at the party (which was held at Shiwei's house).   Here is a photograph of Shiwei with one of the younger party attendees (his daughter).  :)  Shannon was also there celebrating, still all excited about her successful defense two days ago.   And of course, the usual party dissenters who refuse to have their image captured for posterity!

With lots of good food and lots of good friends, a fun party is assured, and we all had a great time. 

Then came the big moment when Cherry was presented with her bottle of champagne from Shiwei!  Hilariously enough, the cork seemed to be stuck and she had quite a time getting it out.  But she was successful in this endeavor, and soon we were all toasting her success and offering up happy wishes for her future!

And finally, here is a picture of the photographer, Wirawan, and his wife Yuliana.  I had the opportunity to meet her for the first time at this party, and I thought that she was quite charming.  You can see me chatting in the background of the picture with my good friend and former officemate Dandan on a sofa!

Congratulations Cherry!!  Good luck in your new job!

Congratulations Shannon!

Yesterday morning my friend Shannon successfully defended her dissertation in the physics department at William and Mary!  Congratulations Shannon!  Shannon, who is the amazingly brilliant goalie of our hockey team, confidently made her case and easily answered the questions of her committee despite the fact that her friends were all in the back of the room giving "moral support".   :)  Even though she says she was nervous, she did beautifully!  I am so happy for her, and it inspires me to try to hurry up and finish so that I can enjoy the relief of being past the scariness of the defense.  The only sad part about it will be the hard part of seeing her leave soon, even though it is cool to know that she has passed her defense!  She will be here for several more weeks, happily, so we will have to opportunity to hang out some more before she leaves the physics department.

That evening, Shannon's advisors had a big party for Shannon to celebrate her graduation, complete with lots of yummy food, drink, and a merrily frosted chocolate cake.  Apparently, some years ago Shannon had told one of her advisors, Brian Holloway of the Department of Applied Science, that when she graduated, she wanted to celebrate with a bottle of a really good wine, because at the party Brian and her primary advisor in the Physics Department, Anne Reilly, presented Shannon with a magnum of a good champagne.  Shannon laughed and was quite excited at this unexpected gift.  It was really cool!  I think that I will have to drop some hints with David and Allison about my defense...  :)

Congratulations Shannon!  Enjoy the champagne!  :D

Last Night Shift for the Week

Today is my last owl shift for this week.  Tonight was not as smooth as all the rest of the week had been.  Hachemi and I were pretty busy, along with Lisa, who is also a HAPPEX graduate student.  For some reason, our network connection which allows us to monitor and control the various parts of the experimental equipment remotely flaked out, leaving us without any idea what any of it all was doing and setting off lots of annoying alarms.  Once this happens, the race begins to get rebooted and reconnected before it all does something undesirable without you being able to do anything about it. 

We were able to get things up and running again, but only after a little difficulty and quite a bit of time.  We had to ramp all the magnets back up to the nominal operating currents, and one of the magnets (the right septum magnet) was being grumpy about it.  It had not quenched, but it had warmed up a fair bit.  Nothing will make a magnet cool to superconducting temperatures any faster than it wants to once you have the cryogenic liquid flow where it should be, so we had to patiently wait for it to cool.  While we waited for that, we also patiently waited for a grouchy quadrupole to re-ramp up, since the first time it had reset itself to the wrong polarity.  Luckily, Lisa happened to notice it pretty quickly, so we could have it ramping up with the correct polarity at the same time that the grumpy septum magnet cooled.

After this exercise in virtue-development, we ramped the now-superconducting magnet back to its nominal current and finally started taking data again.   Despite the magnet issues, we took several hours of data tonight, so it was a productive night.  While I have been on shift this week, Hachemi and I have monitored lots of good physics data coming in for the experiment, so I feel that it has been a very good and fruitful week.  The checklist on the whiteboard has been completed at least!

I am tired after staying up all night every day this week.  The accelerator is going to stop delivering beam at the end of my shift, and I admit that I will be happy to head home and get some well-earned sleep today.  It is a good thing because if I didn't I would be as grumpy as the magnet.    :)

Dawn at Jefferson Lab

Since I have been on the owl shift at Jlab all week, I have had the opportunity to watch the sun rise over the site each day.  Here is a photograph that I took of today's dawn, looking from the upstairs room of the counting house where we monitor the data-taking for the experiment out over the accelerator site.  The tiny crescent sliver of silver in the upper right corner is the moon.   It is really nice that everything is going so smoothly so that I have had the luxury of being able to photograph this and enjoy the serene stillness of the dawning hours here in Virginia.