End Station A

Well folks, I'm back after a highly successful excursion on the Grand River, or what is left of it after a long period of time with small amounts of rain...

Today, aside from catching up on many stories, edits, and other miscellanious chores that pop up after being gone for two days (and battling a stomach bug of some sort), I visited End Station A.

I could just tell you that End Station A is home of the original experiments at SLAC that used electrons accelerated by the linear accelerator. I could stop with a description of the cavernous concrete bunker with extravagant machines that look like they're from the future. I could... but this is an opportunity to teach you so much more...

End Station A was home to the experiments that led to the discovery of quarks, one of the two fundamental building blocks of matter.

Now wait a minute, you may say, I remember being taught in school that the fundamental building blocks of matter were protons, neutrons and electrons. I remember this as well, but do not recall learning anything at all about quarks. But it turns out that protons and neutrons are both made of three combined quarks--protons of 2 "up" quarks and 1 "down quark, and neutrons of 2 "down" quarks and 1 "up" quark.

To make matters more confusing, quarks were discovered at SLAC in 1968. Now how quarks did not manage to become large topics of discussion in my high school physics book 30 years later is beyond me...

Now it turns out there are 6 "flavors" of quarks, including anti-quarks, which make up mesons and a lot of other stuff that get really confusing really fast. But if this piques your interest, here is a link to an excellent site that does a spectacular (though very long) job of explaining just about everything there is to know about particle physics.... Check it out

But beyond all of this physics talk, I thought it was very interesting to walk through hallowed halls of physics and see where the real, Nobel-prize winning work took place. Especially since through time and technology advances, the facility is now simply a test station.