The last two days were extremely busy. Tuesday began with breakfast at Izzy’s Bagels again (by popular demand), and then we took some rest before piling into the van and heading to a few stops. The first was Eric’s Gourmet, a great little sandwich shop right near SLAC and a SLAC staple for many years. We then fueled up at the SLAC gift shop on tee shirts, mugs, and umbrellas – something we had forgotten to do on Monday while we were at SLAC. SLAC is conveniently located by the highway that takes us due south, then east, to Mt. Hamilton.
The road up to the top of Mt. Hamilton was long and winding. Twenty miles of nauseating twists and turns, with sheer drops and no guard rails, awaited us. We chugged slowly up the mountain, finally arriving at the observatory. After a subdued lunch in the cool, foggy air, we headed into the main building for a short tour. The tour treated us to a view of the large reflecting telescope in the main observatory building. While old, the telescope is still used about twice a week, depending on atmospheric conditions. The entire floor surrounding the telescope tower can raise and lower to allow for optimal viewing, the massive telescope is so well-balanced that a single observer can move it by hand using a large handle near the eyepiece.
Following that, we walked the half-mile to the 120-inch reflecting telescope, up a winding mountain road. By then, we were pretty tired, and sat in the dark outside the telescope half-napping to informational videos about the telescope. We concluded our visit to Lick with a walk past a few of the other 10 telescopes on the mountain, heading back to the van and our decent down the mountain. We closed that day with dinner at a noodle house in San Jose.
The third day began with breakfast at one of my own favorite eateries – Stacks, a pancake house in Menlo Park. We were joined by a few colleagues, including our SLAC tour guide.
After breakfast, we headed over to the Bay trails near NASA Ames, to get in a walk and take in the site of the NASA Ames Research Center in the distance. We walked through salt marshland, the Bay to our northeast and the sprawling hangars and wind tunnels of NASA Ames to our southwest. Tired, hungry, and (for some) suffering allergies from all the plants near the trail, we headed into downtown Mountain View for lunch at Sono Sushi. We broke into small groups after that and browsed the small shops along Castro St. in Mt. View, including a vast used book store and a coffee shop.
This killed enough time that we were ready to head to Google for a private tour by a physics colleague of mine who now works at Google. He not only took us around the campus, he arranged a small forum with himself and another trained physicist who also works at Google. They fielded questions, asked about the students’ interests and experience, and gave us some amazing insight into the research philosophy of this important information company. We learned about 20% projects, which employees are encouraged to pursue out of interest in addition to their main projects. We learned about TGIF, a weekly Friday briefing on that week’s accomplishments in the company held in the main cafeteria. We saw the flexible cubicle spaces, the tent-like meeting rooms that look temporary but which are actually fixed parts of the work landscape. We learned about distraction, how to achieve it, and how not to fall prey to it. My own view of what Google is, and how it functions, was radically changed by this experience.
