The Deutsches Physikalische Gesselschaft hosted a Physics School on Nanoantennas and Quantum Nanosystems in Bad Honnef during 25-30 (Sun-Fri) of September. The DPG holds these workshops regularly on different specialized topics, and if they're similar to this one, they're extremely helpful!
Bad Honnef is a tiny town across the river and a little bit south of Bonn. The Physikzentrum surprised me the first time I approached it, a 5 minute walk from my hotel.
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| Us, in the back yard |
The pleasantly antiquated ambience and warm tones of the wooden interior set the mind at ease, countering the blocky white walled rooms that glow sterile and placid with fluorescent lighting our minds often wed with institutions of hard sciences. Approximately 140 attendees distributed among 3 hotels at night gathered in the lecture theatre complete with long continuous tables in each row with outlets to plug in your power cord, phone, or toaster beginning at 9am every day. Talks were given by professors, most of them were high quality, the best having a tutorial style reaching out to the majority of the participants within the first half of their Ph.D. Talks continued throughout the day, with multiple coffee breaks. We gathered in tables in 7 for a sit-down lunch served family style in courses: soup, salad, main course with sides, and dessert. Dinner was much more informal, with a buffet line of mostly finger foods and salads. Only the water in large bottles and Kölsch from the keg were gratis, all other drinks were paid for.
Monday night's post-dinner talk was given by a scientist who works with the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). This talk was supposed to be an entertaining break of general interest. After 6 talks in the day averaging an hour each, absorbing this talk was like trying to climb a wall after swimming the English Channel (I don't really know though, I haven't tried). At one point, he showed a graph with three squiggly line plots of different colors across it. Our organizer enthusiastically grilled all lecturers throughout the week. "What's the blue bump there?" he asked. "Why that's z goes to boson goes to lepton lepton lepton lepton," said our speaker, circling the legend label 'z-boson-llll' on the graph. I met eyes with a new friend halfway down my row and then palmed my face in silent hysterics.
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| Don't you know? |
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| Dr. Jügen Kroseberg, seemingly brilliant |
Nonetheless, the talks were mostly interesting and informative, and as previously mentioned, often delivered with a tutorial and somewhat conversational style, friendly to the audience both new and experienced in the field. The line-up was fantastic overall, including Lukas Novotny, Nader Engheta, Javier Aizpurua, Vahid Sandoghdar, Bert Hecht, Niek van Hulst, Jörg Wrachtrup, Oliver Benson, Romain Quidant, Laura Liu (who I didn't even know had been at Rice since January), and Rashid Zia. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights' dinners were followed by a poster session. I presented until almost 11pm on the first two nights of the poster session.
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| This is the only non-blurry poster session picture I have |
Our major break came on Tuesday afternoon. According to our organizer, Professor Giessen, and his 35 member research army in attendance, we "hiked" up a "small hill" called Drachenfels. Drachenfels is the site in the German legend Nibelungenlied where Siegfried slayed the dragon and then bathed in its blood to become invincible. According to my roommate from his group, this climb through the forest above the wine slopes was indeed the easiest group excursion compared to their annual retreat.
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| We sailed to Drachenfels on the Beethoven |
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| Drachenfels, seen from the top deck of the boat |
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| Am Dienstag, hat mich eine wespe gestochen am mein arm. It's on the bicep just above the elbow crease. It was impressively painful and long lasting. |
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| We passed vineyards with leavings changing color |
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| A sweet view |
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| Another sweet view |
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| A small fraction of our group in the sun beams |
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| Construction! |
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| Crossing the construction |
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| The dragon is sleeping during the construction. You can call the hotline |
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| Another sweet view |
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| Reminds me of a mermaid, except we're on a mountain |
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| Another sweet view |
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| Another sweet view |
I'm grateful to have attended this intensive week of antennas, dipoles, and related conversations resulting in more ideas, new perspectives, and new friends in Barcelona, San Sebastian, Zürich, Brown University, Stuttgart, Austria, Paderborn, München, the Netherlands, and Dayton, Ohio. The general perception of physicists and chemists in Germany manifests itself no different from the reaction you get when you tell someone you're a grad student in one of these fields during an oil company Christmas party. Research, however, is social, and progresses thanks to opportunities for conversations at any time of day about science and scientists, best in aesthetically pleasing environments that set the mind at ease, loosening the channels for creativity to flow through.
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