The CHESS tour allowed me to see a part of Cornell University I would have never seen before—the Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory. In fact, this laboratory is such a big part of Cornell as it consumes the most electricity on campus and it remains open 24/7 except on Tuesday mornings when it is shut down for a couple of hours for repairs (it also conserves some energy). The building has a very funny structure and is hidden from the rest of campus. Finding the building was as challenging as trying to understand the science of what they do there!

I was overwhelmed with the science of how exactly the lab operates. It’s definitely a world-class research laboratory designed by physicists to study particles—of course they could only study electrons because the lab equipment was considered too small to study other particles. Granted I thought this was crazy. Their machine for particle analysis is 3 stories high, how can that be too small!? But in comparison with labs near Chicago and Geneva, Switzerland, the circumference of Cornell’s lab is significantly smaller. Though they don’t use the particle analysis machine anymore named CLEO (the machine hasn’t been functioning for years and is currently being taken apart and the iron is being recycled), the entire lab still operates.

The CHESS lab has been a part of so many research projects. It uses high energy particles to further develop x-ray technology and analyze materials as well as further research in physics, biology, and chemistry. The synchrotron lab could be used to analyze the structure of proteins in viruses so that drugs could be designed to fight the virus. I learned a lot about applications and how research could be conducted to make significant discoveries. I am so happy to have visited the CHESS lab and seen a big part of Cornell.