This REU program was funded through NSF PHY-2150515.
Students within a fallen sequoia
Calaveras Big Trees State Park
On the program's first full weekend, we went to Calaveras Big Trees State Park in the western foothills of the Sierra Mountains. Calaveras features pleasant wooded hiking and some VERY large trees. They are giant sequoias, the largest trees by volume. (The sequoias in Sequoia National Park are larger than those at Calaveras, but the Calaveras trees are still huge.) Coastal redwood trees, a close relative of sequoias, grow even taller but the sequoias make up for it through larger girth. This is related to how they grow: sequoias are loners, occuring in the midst of other types of trees, but coastal redwoods grow in clumps that often lean on and support each other. The coastal redwoods intermingle far less with other tree species, to the extent that they create their own weather within their redwood forests.
McClellan Nuclear Research Center
UC Davis oversees the McClellan Nuclear Research Center in Sacramento, with its TRIGA (Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics) nuclear reactor. The reactor is used for imaging metal parts, a non-destructive way to search for hidden defects or corrosion. Its radiation can also be used to induce plant mutations, which can be investigated further if they give rise to useful properties, and for other niche applications like imaging unopened archaeological finds. After learning about and seeing the reactor, the group was treated to a pizza lunch.
Lick Observatory
Lick Observatory, founded in 1888, remains an active research facility operated by the University of California. The REU group had a private tour of its historic and active telescopes. We heard about the extraordinary life of James Lick himself, saw sunset over the San Francisco Bay Area, and viewed through one of the world's largest refracting telescopes. The left photo shows its open dome, with the telescope on the far side of the central support structure and pointing straight up. For scale, note the stepladder in front and the spiral staircase on the right side of the support structure.
Point Reyes National Seashore
A day trip to Point Reyes filled in at the last minute for a planned overnight trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park. In recent years a sad reality of summer visits to forested parts of California has been the potential for forest fires. The Park Fire started less than two weeks before the intended trip to Lassen, and within two days our reservations were cancelled and a length park closure announced. Fortunately, Point Reyes provided a great day with Miwok structures and sea lions on cliff-lined beaches.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The final trip was a tour of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, particularly the National Ignition Facility (NIF) with its powerful, finely aligned lasers. NIF explores the potential for extracting energy from fusion, which could be an effectively limitless source of clean energy.