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| a SQUID |
My interest in physics grows from curiosity about nature, applications or no, but I can't help feeling a thrill when I see the esoteric technologies physicists puzzle over finding unexpected uses in the wider world. Over the summers of '09 and '10, I interned in San Francisco State's Cryogenic Electronics Group (CEG, led by Prof. Barbara Neuhauser), a team specializing in R&D of superconducting detectors like SQUIDs and Superconducting Tunnel Junctions (STJs), devices based on the electron tunneling physics of Josephson Junctions. The CEG builds these devices, one thin film at a time, solely for their research applications in WIMP searches and X-ray spectroscopy of enzymes, respectively. Back then, I never imagined that in a few years I'd hear a talk on SQUIDs scanning people's airplane luggage, or serving as a cheaper alternative to MRI.
Nevertheless, Michelle Espy's plenary talk, "Taming the SQUID: How a nuclear physics education (mostly) helped my career in applied physics," described just that. I couldn't help but feel a thrill, seeing first-hand the ways that science for science's sake ripples out into ordinary life.
