Follow SPS on:

Golden, CO, October 23, 2009

SPS Reporter Ben Frandsen working on a crystal sample with BYU’s x-ray diffractometer.

Early in the morning of Friday, October 23rd, my faithful alarm clock wakened me and I rolled out of bed to get ready to start another day at school. Only after several seconds did the almost too-good-to-be-true thought come to mind that school was cancelled for me that day! To be fair, I actually love attending Brigham Young University and I find my classes most satisfying, but I was nevertheless thrilled that early Friday morning. Rather than heading up to campus for my quantum mechanics class, I would get into a car and hurry up to the Salt Lake City International Airport to catch a plane for Denver, Colorado, on my way to the 4 Corners meeting at the Colorado School of Mines located in picturesque Golden, Colorado. 

I’ll admit, more than just excitement accompanied me on the plane—I was a bit nervous, as well. As a junior at BYU, I had already had ample opportunity to be involved in conducting research with experienced professors, and I had even been able to present some of our research at various events on BYU campus, but I had never before traveled to a research conference to present in front of a potentially large and certainly very intelligent audience. The 4 Corners meeting was my first exposure to this important part of the physics world. I still did not know exactly what to expect while sitting in the airplane flying over the beautiful Rocky Mountains, but just 48 hours later, I would leave the conference feeling utterly satisfied and highly motivated. Allow me to summarize what I thought were the most positive aspects of the conference—communication, collaboration, and camaraderie.

	John Grunsfeld delivering his keynote speech  about his recent experiences with the Hubble Telescope.

The 4 Corners meeting provided me and the hundreds of other undergraduate and graduate students in attendance an excellent opportunity to communicate and share with each other. My particular research project, which most recently has involved x-ray diffraction with piezoelectric materials, is absolutely fascinating to me, but it would be tragic if that were the only branch of physics I were familiar with. While it is impossible to know everything about every major field in modern physics, we can still benefit tremendously from expanding our horizons by learning about many different directions of research. That is exactly what happened at the 4 Corners meeting. On that Friday morning before the conference, I had never heard of an XUV frequency comb and I had absolutely no familiarity with attosecond laser physics, but by Friday evening, after hearing several talks on the subject, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I could now conduct something of a conversation with another scientist about this fascinating branch of physics! This type of communication happened in every session with every speaker, enlarging and enriching my awareness and understanding of current developments in physics.

Participants enjoying the poster session on Friday afternoon.

Communication brings with it the potential for collaboration. During the poster session on Friday afternoon, I took the opportunity to browse the hundreds of interesting and well-designed displays, thereby getting a taste of the dazzling variety of research projects happening at the universities in the 4 Corners section of the APS. I was also able to speak in depth with several of the students who were presenting their posters, and I was surprised at how applicable some of their projects were to mine. I was particularly impressed by the posters of two students—one from UC Boulder, whose work on piezoelectrics gave me new insights into my own investigation of a particular type of piezoelectric material, and the other from Utah State University, whose experiences with x-ray diffraction at a synchrotron dovetailed nicely with my own recent trip and my upcoming follow-up trip to the synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratory. Although I will not be directly working with these two students in the immediate future, it was gratifying and reassuring to realize how effectively research meetings like this one can facilitate collaboration between scientists. I hope to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity in the future.

	Awards ceremony on Saturday afternoon.

Finally, a remarkable feeling of camaraderie accompanied the whole of the proceedings of the meeting. I seemed to feel a sense of unity and friendship, not only with my fellow BYU students, but also with students from all across the 4 Corners section. Listening to the amazing plenary speakers, including NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld, APS President Cherry Murray, National Ignition Facility Director Richard Boyd, and others, was made that much more meaningful and memorable by sharing it with other aspiring scientists. By the time we had our outdoor barbeque Saturday afternoon, a very friendly and comfortable atmosphere had been created, and I think many of us left the meeting already impatient for the next chance to associate with so many great young scientists once more.

The 4 Corners meeting exceeded my expectations and left me grateful for what I had learned, motivated to get back to the lab and continue working hard, and excited for future opportunities to attend research conferences. Many thanks to the hundreds of people and thousands of hours involved in organizing and executing this event—it was well worth it.