Newport News, Va. — Two young physicists participating in research at the Department of Energy's Jefferson Lab have joined nearly 30 other scientists in celebrating the World Year of Physics through blogging in "Quantum Diaries." Sarah Phillips, from the United States, and Claire Gray, from South Africa, have just begun their blogging adventures.
Quantum Diaries is a Web site that follows the lives of physicists worldwide as they live the World Year of Physics, 2005. In blogs, photographs and video clips, and in half a dozen languages, the Quantum Diarists give readers a real-time picture of the lives of 21st-century scientists. Writing in French, English, Russian, Japanese, Italian, Dutch and German, among other languages, scientists from universities and laboratories in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe have volunteered to .blog. their experiences, thoughts, impressions, triumphs and disappointments as the year 2005 unfolds.
Sarah Phillips is pursuing graduate studies at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. She received her Master's degree in 2002 and is currently writing her Ph.D. dissertation. Her thesis research involves an experiment called G-zero, which is measuring parity-violating asymmetries in elastic electron-proton scattering. One goal of the experiment is to help determine the contribution of the strange quark to the charge and magnetic properties of the proton. Phillips' thesis is focusing on data from the G-zero forward-angle measurement taken last year.
Claire Gray is just starting her Master's work at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She's pursuing a degree in high energy physics and is participating in an experiment to measure Sub-threshold J/Psi Photoproduction. In the experiment, researchers hope to learn about the behavior of the nucleus through charm quark production. Gray aims to use data from the experiment in preparing her thesis.
The Quantum Diaries web site was developed and is jointly maintained by the InterAction collaboration, whose members represent the world's particle physics laboratories in Europe, North America and Asia, with funding provided by the science funding agencies of many nations. Visit Quantum Diaries at: www.quantumdiaries.org.