Tag: HDR

Staging Area

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Even in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world, there has to be a place to store the equipment that makes everything run. In the foreground of this view from Berkeley Lab’s Building 62 are the shipping containers and assorted equipment used by the physical plant to keep the lab running. I’ve always found the contradiction—using very expensive land to store mundane objects—to be an engaging one. Of course, if all of the land were employed for its “valuable” use and the practical aspects were neglected, the result would be that the land would cease to be valuable.

Staging Area

This Is the Laser

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The laboratories of physical scientists across the planet have pulsed laser systems like this one, and many look quite similar: a collection of squat boxes covering optics, electronics, and beampaths. Above or below the surface of the table are additional boxes of electronics driving the lasers and detectors. This particular system is special to me for two reasons: (1) most modern laser tables don’t have rad wood grain paneling, and (2) this was the instrument I used during my sabbatical at Berkeley Lab last spring. Lots of good data emerged from its photomultiplier tube.

This Is the Laser

House on the Frozen Lake

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The northeastern US has been gripped by severe and hardened cold. Consider, for a moment, how much colder 20 ºF feels than 60 ºF. Imagine that difference projected past its original low point, out the other side to -20 ºF. After past winter temperatures like these, I can attest that the return to “normal” winter really does feel 40 ºF warmer. The rivers and lakes are freezing. The snow is a dry powder, dozens of degrees below its melting point. A warm home above the frozen waters sounds pretty inviting.

House on the Frozen Lake

Marine Layer II: Revenge of Marine Layer

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I produce a lot of photographs every year, but there’s still a special feeling when one of those images moves a friend or acquaintance so much that they ask for a print. This particular image, fully cleaned-up and pixel-peeped to optimizing for printing (after starting life on Instagram) is one such example. I have to admit, the sinuous curves of the marine layer snaking through the Golden Gate, and the shadows beneath the clouds providing additional contrast, are a solid image.

Marine Layer II: Revenge of the Marine Layer

Gathering to Watch from the Lab

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Students from Berkeley’s campus climb as high up the hill as they can to watch the sunset behind San Francisco and the Golden Gate, but the barbed wire fence of the Department of Energy National Lab makes for a cut-off point. Far on the other side is Grizzly Peak: another great view, but one without the immediacy of this particular spot. Inside the perimeter of the lab, I had the opportunity to experience a set of perspectives both scientific and literal that are beyond the scope of everyday Berkeley life.

Gathering to Watch from the Lab

Campus on the Eve of Finals Week

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Finals week is upon St. Lawrence University. The campus is in full “winter mode”, blanketed with snow. The oddest thing about this time is its effect on the student population: a sharp partitioning between those who are finished, relaxed, preparing to leave and those who are tense, stressed, and trying to make it through. Like the dynamics of molecules in excited states, that latter group slowly relaxes to join the former.

Campus on the Eve of Finals Week

Quitting Time at the Lab

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Snow covered northern New York this week, and the temperature rests in the single degrees Fahrenheit; now is an excellent time to look back at the warm eternal-summer glow of California. Particularly in contrast to the >60-hour-per-week graduate students down on campus, the “standard” workweek of staff at Berkeley Lab was a remarkably normal trend. At the end of the day, with that sunset light arriving, the workers who keep the physical plant running come outside into the evening breeze and head home.

Quitting Time at the Lab

A Farm in Vermont

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A family farm on a hillside in northern Vermont at the start of winter is like an empty table, ready to be set for a meal. These and other folksy aphorisms, brought to you by a digital eye on a flying robot stabilized by orbiting artificial satellites and electronic gyroscopes. The future is excellent!

A Farm in Vermont