The Ask a Scientist table in the lobby of Fermilab’s Lederman Science Education Center boasted two chairs, a few reference books and stacks of promotional fliers about the federal particle accelerator laboratory. Physicists Tom Lincoln and Alan Wehmann, however, weren’t sitting there.
Instead, the two volunteers for the Saturday were striding all over the lobby, using the charts and maps that line the walls to enlighten area residents who came in with questions ranging from the anatomy of quarks to the feeding habits of the bison herd that makes its home at Fermilab..
“I’ve gone to the [Fermilab] lectures and read some popular science books, but there’s nothing like sitting down one-on-one with a real scientist to help me understand how this all works, at least at a basic level,” said Wheaton resident John Hall, an industrial designer. He said he came to ask about the differences between light and magnetic forces. (Lincoln said there is no difference, the two are separate aspects of the same force.)
A half dozen people discussed their questions recently with Wehmann and Lincoln, while about 15 more came just to check out the hands-on exhibits in the museum’s galleries.
Most Saturdays the program attracts between 20 and 30 curious questioners, said Fermilab spokesman Kurt Riesselmann. “This has been a wonderful opportunity for the public to meet scientists, learn what we do and learn that we are real people just like them,” he said. “We even help with homework, so at certain times of the year the program becomes very popular.”
Ask a Scientist got its start in September 2000, when particle physicist Peter Garbincius came to work one Saturday to monitor an ongoing experiment.
“I ran into a visitor who said, `Hey, are you one of the scientists? I have a question,’ and I realized we had no mechanism to handle questions from individuals,” Garbincius recalled.
So he recruited volunteers from among his co-workers, sent notices to area newspapers and set up shop Sunday afternoons in the top floor of Wilson Hall, the campus’s main research building. “That was a great location, because people could look out the windows and actually see all the places we were talking about,” he said.
Last fall, the program shut down for a few months when the U.S. Department of Energy tightened security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In December, it relocated to the science education center–the only Fermilab facility that visitors still can reach by car–and switched to Saturday afternoons because the center is closed Sundays.
“I keep hoping we can move it back to Wilson someday, but people have had no problem finding us here,” Lincoln said.
One visitor was Miles Wrigley of Hoffman Estates, who came to take a tour and stayed to ask Wehmann if faster-than-light communication is theoretically possible. (No, Wehmann said.)
“I didn’t know about this program, but I’m glad it’s here,” Wrigley said. “We’re all human beings, and we’re all curious about what makes the universe work. Finding other people who are investigating the things I’m curious about is great because it lets me share that curiosity.”
Crystal Lake resident Todd Hedgcock debated the gravitational properties of antimatter with Lincoln while his children worked the robotic Geiger counter and examined the cosmic ray detector. “I don’t know enough math to really study this stuff, but I still find it interesting,” he commented. “Discussing it with people who work with it every day helps me understand it.”
The scientists who take turns staffing the table specialize in explaining complex physics concepts in layman’s terms. “Analogy is a great teaching tool,” Lincoln said. “Relating subatomic phenomena to things that happen in everyday life makes what’s actually going on more accessible to people because it helps them visualize the interactions.”
Hall said the scientists’ methods work for him. “I have learned a lot about what they do here, and I didn’t need to be a math expert to understand it,” he said. “I think the only reason this program isn’t more popular is that most people don’t know it exists. If they broadcast it on a local TV station and let people phone in questions, their phone lines would be jammed.”
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Ask a Scientist takes place from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturdays at the Lederman Science Education Center in Fermilab. For more information, call 630-840-5588.
