By wpengine April 18, 2003
The Segway Human Transporter claims to be the world’s first self-balancing, electric-powered personal transportation device. Vice President Dick Cheney has used one, as have park rangers and postal workers in various cities across the United States. Its inventor, Dean Kamen, promises it will revolutionize how people get from place to place. But not at Cornell, at least in the near future. Phil Karnofsky ’06 found this out when he approached Cornell Transportation Services (CTS) about using his recently purchased Segway on campus. After a meeting with representatives from Cornell University Police Department, the Judicial Administrator’s office, Environmental Health and Safety and the Risk Management office, Susan Powell, CTS’s special programs manager, gave Karnofsky the news. “I am unable to offer even temporary authorization to operate your Segway on campus. [If] you choose to ride it on campus at all, you [risk] being cited for violations of state and municipal law,” she wrote in an e-mail. Powell cited existing traffic laws, which allow for “electrically-driven mobility assistance devices” on sidewalks only if the operator has a disability. Additionally, Powell noted, the Segway does not yet meet existing qualifications as a motor vehicle, as there are no standardized provisions for its registration, insurance or safety equipment. According to Powell, Cornell’s hands are tied. New York has yet to join the over 30 states which have passed Segway-friendly legislation. “Once there’s a law from the state legislature, we can work with that,” Powell said. Resolutions qualifying a “Segwayer” as a pedestrian were proposed in both the New York State Assembly and Senate, and both were referred to each body’s transportation committee. Even if such resolutions are passed, “the picture may or may not change,” Powell wrote. Mike Katz of Ithaca’s Sciencenter sympathized with Karnofsky’s woes. “It’s technology moving faster than legislators,” he said. Pennsylvania recently passed legislation allowing Segways to be used on pedestrian walkways, but at Penn State University the administration opted to ban the devices anyway. Powell said Cornell would likely contact Penn State and other universities about Segways, but that the University would also look at how the devices fit into existing campus traffic patterns. When inline skates became popular, Cornell went through a similar process, Powell noted. After determining that existing traffic patterns made it unsafe for skaters to use roadways, the University allowed them on sidewalks instead. Karnofsky shelled out more than $5,000 for the vehicle instead of buying himself a motorcycle. The first three Segways available for purchase sold for considerably more, a combined $364,800, with profits going to charity. Karnofsky cannot return the Segway “because they only accept unopened returns,” and he is “not allowed to sell it for a few months [due to] the terms and conditions of the sale.” He lamented that “having it just sit in my room is a big disappointment. [The] way it’s looking, I probably won’t be able to ride it while I’m at Cornell.” Yesterday, in front of Founders Hall, Karnofsky gave a demonstration of his Segway. Nearly every student passing by stopped to gawk, ask questions and try it out. The Segway looks like a plastic upright push lawnmower with a platform between the two wheels. As the rider leans, so goes the device, up to a speed of 12 miles per hour. It weighs about 90 pounds and can turn on a dime by twisting part of the handlebar. There are no brakes — leaning back stops the device’s forward movement. “It’s supposed to be an extension of your body, to mimic its movements,” Karnofsky said. “All you’ve got to do is stay loose.” Karnofsky believes that the Segway is “just as pedestrian as a motorized wheelchair,” occupies less space and is easier to control. It is designed to go in any building that is wheelchair-accessible and even uses its wheels’ traction to grip onto stairs, making it easier to drag up several floors. Around 20 students tried the Segway yesterday. Aryeh Kaplan ’04 came up with the most creative application for the device. “I could joust with this thing,” Kaplan noted. One way to acquire a Segway for less than its list price is to enter the Ithaca Sciencenter’s raffle to be held on June 27. Archived article by Dan Galindo
By wpengine April 18, 2003
The fourth in a series of articles on hidden treasures at Cornell. Something is buried under Cornell’s playing fields. Fifty feet below the surface of the earth, next to Wilson Lab, there is a ring-shaped tunnel roughly half a mile in circumference. Here, scientists work day and night to unlock the secrets of the universe. Sound like an urban legend or the plot of a science-fiction movie? It’s not: it’s the Laboratory for Elementary Particle Physics’ (LEPP) particle accelerator. The LEPP, which was once known as the Laboratory of Nuclear Studies, first opened immediately after World War II. It has gone through several different phases over the years, and the current facility was constructed in 1979. The particle accelerator runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week with the exception of maintenance and improvement periods. The cost of energy, maintenance, equipment and staff salaries is covered by an annual budget of approximately $20 million. At this point, students who don’t know much about physics are probably asking what all this means. Prof. David G. Cassel, physics, associate director of LEPP, was more than happy to answer that question. “It accelerates particles,” he said with a smile. The particle accelerator consists of four parts: the linear accelerator (linac), the synchrotron, the Cornell Electron-Positron Storage Ring (CESR) and CLEO. It all begins in the linac. Here, electrons are accelerated to an energy of 300 million electron volts (eV). A regular flashlight battery has 1.5 eV of energy, so this is equivalent to sending an electron through 200 million flashlight batteries stacked end-to-end. Although theoretically possible, “doing this with a stack of flashlight batteries is not a good way to do it,” Cassel pointed out. In the next step, the electrons are injected into the synchrotron where they are further accelerated to an energy of five billion eV. “The idea is to accelerate particles to energies that are so high that they are traveling at almost the speed of light,” Cassel explained. At this point, the electrons are injected into CESR. The steps leading up to this only take a few minutes, but the electrons remain in CESR for roughly an hour. At the same time that this is happening to electrons, the positrons — which are the antiparticles of electrons — are going through the same process but traveling in the other direction. The electrons and positrons, which remain at five billion eV, then crash into each other in a section of the accelerator known as the CLEO Detector. All of this is done in an effort to understand elementary particles. “As far as we know, the world is made of 12 elementary particles,” Cassel said. These are further split into two different categories, he said — leptons and quarks. The leptons include electrons, muons, taus and neutrinos. The quarks have slightly less scientific-sounding names. They are up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. Contrary to what many students may believe, protons and neutrons are not elementary particles; they are actually composed of a combination of “up” and “down” quarks. When the electrons and positrons in CESR collide, they form B mesons and anti-B mesons — “bottom” quarks and their antiparticles. This demonstrates a fundamental principle of physics. “There’s no way to create particles without creating antiparticles in the process,” Cassel said. At this point, Cassel’s explanation takes a more theoretical turn. Assuming that the big bang theory is correct, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have formed when the universe was created. However, most if not all of this antimatter seems to have disappeared, he said. Theoretically, there are three things needed to explain the disappearance of antimatter, and one of them is something called a CP violation. A very small amount of CP violation was observed in “strange” quarks in 1964. That is one of the main reasons for the research with quarks. “We’re trying to relate that [observation from 1964] to the CP violation that got rid of the antimatter for us,” Cassel explained. Although the leading laboratories for studying this phenomenon are currently at Stanford and a Japanese facility called KEK, Cornell has a distinguished history in the field. “For a good 20 years, we were the best facility in the world for studying B mesons,” Cassel said. “And most of what’s known about B mesons and what’s known about properties related to CP violations and mesons comes from the CLEO experiment.” Cassel was, however, anxious to point out that the CLEO experiment is not purely a Cornell effort. It’s actually a collaboration of roughly 130 physicists and 19 different universities. Some of the people involved with this research are students. This year, there are 40 graduate students — 15 from Cornell — and roughly 50 undergraduates working in the field. According to Cassel, this is a great opportunity for students because “they can do something that will actually contribute to the research effort of the lab.” One student who has done that is Derek Kingrey ’03. Kingrey, who has been involved with the program since he was a freshman, works with the superconducting radio frequency group. His research focuses on “the ‘acceleration’ part of the particle accelerator,” he said. “The experience has definitely been beneficial,” Kingrey said, citing the experience he has gained in lab techniques and various branches of physics, chemistry and engineering. Kingrey admitted that he has not been directly involved with the general research being done, but added, “My feeling though, in working in the lab, is that professors and other researchers are excited about new ideas for future uses of the accelerator.” Cassel agreed that the researchers are passionate about their work. “I think the way that the larger numbers of students really benefit [from the particle accelerator] is that by having a facility here like this, we tend to attract really first-rate people to the faculty of the University.” Cassel went on to say that the faculty are just as enthusiastic about teaching as they are about their research. “We try very hard to communicate this excitement and this interest to these students that we’re teaching,” he added. Currently, LEPP is in the process of shutting down the accelerator to make changes to some of the equipment. These changes are necessary, Cassel said, because the program is starting to change its focus. “We’ve contributed what we can to the direct understanding of the B quark,” he explained, “so we’re now going to turn ourselves into the world’s best facility for studying the charm quark.” Archived article by Courtney Potts