<story><title>Major shake-up coming for Fermilab, the troubled U.S. particle physics center</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/major-shake-coming-fermilab-troubled-u-s-particle-physics-center</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>h2odragon</author><text>One of my great joys as a teenager exploring electronics was the opportunity to clean out an old storage closet at some Fermilab facility with a friend. This was in the late 80s, we got several 1950s oscilloscopes and much other gear of similar era.&lt;p&gt;The room had been overlooked in the usual surplus process for years. My friend was related to someone working for the janitorial services company, and they&amp;#x27;d been told to clean that room out and throw the stuff away. So what we got to do was help with that, and put anything we liked in my car instead of the dumpster.&lt;p&gt;We were stripping stuff there in the parking lot to save space. Crammed that car &lt;i&gt;full&lt;/i&gt; of junk. It was a truly wonderful day.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jeffbee</author><text>As a teenager I got to work and study at Fermi for two weeks under a DoE summer program. There was one kid from each US state and territory, and a few from other countries. We worked in the shops assembling the D0 and Leon Lederman tried to teach cosmology, which was both an incredible privilege and ultimately futile. I was eating in the cafeteria the day the Texas Supercollider was canceled and I don’t think there’s ever been a sadder crowd of physicists anywhere.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if they still do that summer program.</text></comment>
<story><title>Major shake-up coming for Fermilab, the troubled U.S. particle physics center</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/major-shake-coming-fermilab-troubled-u-s-particle-physics-center</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>h2odragon</author><text>One of my great joys as a teenager exploring electronics was the opportunity to clean out an old storage closet at some Fermilab facility with a friend. This was in the late 80s, we got several 1950s oscilloscopes and much other gear of similar era.&lt;p&gt;The room had been overlooked in the usual surplus process for years. My friend was related to someone working for the janitorial services company, and they&amp;#x27;d been told to clean that room out and throw the stuff away. So what we got to do was help with that, and put anything we liked in my car instead of the dumpster.&lt;p&gt;We were stripping stuff there in the parking lot to save space. Crammed that car &lt;i&gt;full&lt;/i&gt; of junk. It was a truly wonderful day.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jjtheblunt</author><text>Fermilab was built from late 1967 and opened in 1969 so that must have been really old stuff.&lt;p&gt;Similar to your story, I got to take high school physics extra classes there, and it was awesome, like being in a Star Wars set with entirely normal parents who worked there and who could teach us really interesting physics (classical mostly, and relativity).</text></comment>