Today summed up my present role in physics. Within earshot of the "kick-off" meeting of the next big thing (a neutrino telescope beneath the sea) I was fiddling around with an imitation of an 84 year old experiment which comfortably sits on a desktop. I am rather happy with this state of affairs. Although I wish the km3netters the best of luck, it is not for me. It may be stimulating to build one sensor, but after you build, test and install several hundred you probably get a bit fed up with them. Once you get into the thousands I can't bear to think.
If I may quote Arthur Roberts (you really want to check out this link)
“Oh, dammit – engineering isn’t physics – isn’t that plain?
Take, oh take your billion dollars. Let’s be physicists again.”
1 comment:
I'm sure most of the people in the km3net kickoff meeting have been dreaming of "doing it right this time". But being forced to do mediocre things, by time pressure and bad management, will catch up on them over time. As graduates they should have known better, just as all of us should.
Compared to that it's much better to do things that are (at least in some way) proven and have a small change of working out well in the end. So have fun building your stern-gerlach!
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