Last week I was at a physics conference in New London, New Hampshire. The conference is called the Gordon Research Conference for Nuclear Chemistry and has been held a Colby-Sawyer college for many years. I enjoyed the conference, although most of the talks were difficult for me to follow. I learned a few things, though. I enjoyed getting to know some of the other physicists though. There were several people from Spain there and one guy was from Argentina. I enjoyed speaking Spanish with them.
My adviser, Wim Dickhoff, was not completely satisfied with the conference because the conference is typically geared toward experimentalists, but Wim is a theoretical physicist. He said that many assumptions that the experimentalists make aren’t theoretically sound. Most of the experimentalists know this, too, but most of the theoretical calculations still cannot reproduce the data very well.
Here some pictures from the conference:
This is the dorm building I stayed in (Lawson Hall)
This building housed the dining hall, among other things.
Another dorm. The campus was pretty.
One day some conferees went to a nearby gorge.
Mark Burnett (my office mate a WashU) on our way down to the river.
Michael Murry, another physicist at the conference.
A big fern. It was about 4 ft. tall.
The bottom of the gorge.
Mark and Michael looking for a rock to throw in the river. They wanted to figure out how deep the river was. Michael was especially curious and was tempted to jump in to find out. Mark said, “I wonder what is down there,” to which Michael responded, “Probably a physicist,” to which I joked, “Every year someone goes missing from the Gordon Conference.” 🙂
Me trying to break a branch so that we can measure the depth of the river.
The gorge.
The last dinner was a lobster dinner.
Every evening there was free beer and wine.
There are some more people pictures but another physicist took them with her camera. When she sends them to me, I will post those, too. I find that I am uncomfortable taking pictures of other people, if I don’t know them very well, so that is why I didn’t take very many people pictures.
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Sounds and looks like you had a good time, Seth. The campus is indeed pretty, and the gorge is gorgeous 😉 It is nice to put faces to names, specifically Mark since he is your WashU office mate.
Was the lobster yummy? Hard to eat? Fun to eat?
Thanks for the info and pics.
The procedure for getting to the meat of the lobster was awkward, especially since I had never eaten lobster before. I had to use a nutcracker to crack the pincers. It was a rather violent procedure, I must say. The meat was good, but I am not sure why it is so popular. Somebody at the conference told me that lobster used to be fed mostly to prisoners. Somehow, it turned into a delicacy.
Sounds like a good experience.
Thanks for sharing the pics with commentary.
It really is pretty up there. I’m glad you had a good time.
Glad you were able to do this