Fortunately for me, I did not have class today! I usually have three hours of back to back physics, but class was cancelled because we were going to visit a lab in Grenoble. The lab tour wasn’t until 1:30, so I slept in until 10 to make up for my crappy night of sleep on the bus yesterday. When I woke up, I threw on some clothes and went to downstairs to have breakfast. There were two strange men in the house, who I learned were fixing the wifi. I forgot to write about this yesterday, but I had realized the wifi had stopped working last night. I asked Anne-Marie in French about it and she said it would be fixed tomorrow. That’s where we are now.
After breakfast, I grabbed my athletic clothes and headed to the gym. Today I was doing back and triceps. The gym was pretty much empty so I had a good time. My gym might be bare-bones, but when you have it to yourself it feels huge.
At one point I was the only one at the gym, I used this opportunity to take pictures of it.
I am getting much better at doing the kilo to lbs conversion in my head. I finished with an ab workout and left the gym. I realized I needed something for lunch, so I headed to the nearby convenience store, Petit Casino. I grabbed a different pre-made salad, a package of chocolate brioche, and box of tissues. I picked up a cold while in Paris and have been going through tissues like a madman.
I headed back home to shower and get changed. After showering, I put away all my clothes from the drying rack. While doing this, I watched Ratatouille on my laptop. I had watched the beginning in Paris, and was in the mood to watch it. This was the first TV show or movie I’ve watched in about three weeks. I also made my lunch while watching.
The premade salad I got today was a bit different and reminded me of a Lunchable from the US. It had the salad, as well as three small bread sticks and a cookie. The dressing came in something that looked like a test tube. This salad was a great deal for four euros.
My salad from lunch
After eating, I grabbed a chocolate brioche for the road and headed to the lab facilities. The lab was in a part of Grenoble I had never been to, so I had to really pay attention to the directions. Outside the lab gates were my two BU classmates, Sydney and Aleks. The rest of my American and French classmates began to arrive. This was a good time to socialize with some of the French students who I hadn’t really interacted with yet. I talked a lot with my new friend Ahmad who I see in class all the time.
The lab we were visiting was the Grenoble National High Magnetic Field Lab, also known as CNRS. This facility has some of the strongest magnets in the world and people will buy time with the magnets to conduct research in the strong and static magnetic fields. The magnets were capable of producing fields of about 36 T. For reference, MRI machines have super strong magnets in them and they only produce 1.5 T. This was some advanced stuff.
Our professor conducts research at this lab and knew a ton of information about the magnets. He took us to a room where he gave a presentation about the facility and the research being done here. Interestingly enough, they are doing a lot of research about magnetic levitation here.
Here’s a video about the facility if anyone is interested:
Our professor then took us on a tour of the facility. I will spare you all the details, and just show some pictures.
He demonstrated how the magnets worked here with smaller versions we could actually see.
Here is one of the giant magnets. They can only turn them on at night because the massive amounts of electricity they need to use are cheaper then.
Here are the massive coils that power the magnet. If you touch these while they’re on, you will die.
After the tour, our professor took us to a smaller room. He said we would be playing with magnets and superconductors. For those unaware of what a superconductor is, here’s a little blurb from reddit:
A superconductor is a material that can conduct electricity with “zero resistance.” The way that a regular conductor works is that if you apply a voltage to it, like hooking up a battery to each end of the wire, current will flow. When we say “current,” we mean that the electrons in the wire will physically move from one end of the battery to the other (and through the battery itself).
The battery provides a certain amount of voltage, which is like a “push” on the electrons. The current is a response to that “push.” What limits the amount of current is the resistance in the wire, which is exactly what it sounds like: it resists the flow of current.
Any familiar wire material (like copper or w/e) has resistance. So, there’s a limit on how much current you can push through the wire, since you can’t have an infinitely strong voltage.
A superconductor, on the other hand, has no resistance whatsoever. In theory, you can have an infinitely strong current, because the material makes no effort to try to stop you from pushing its electrons around. In practice, there are a variety of reasons why you still can’t have infinitely strong current, but the point here is that it’s not the wire itself that’s stopping you.
If you’re to lazy to read this, just understand that when superconductors are kept really cold, they act like super strong magnets due to their lack of resistance. The super conductors we were using had to be kept at 77 Kelvin, which is -321 degrees Fahrenheit. This was done using liquid nitrogen.
Here’s a video of us sticking our fingers in the -321°F liquid nitrogen!
Our professor put the super conductor in a tiny container with a magnet sitting on top. Then he poured liquid nitrogen over both of them. Once the superconductor got cold enough, the magnet on top started levitating. This was super cool.
Here’s a video of this.
He then repeated this experiment with a bunch of different sized conductors and magnets. It was super cool to see levitation happening with the magnets. He let us touch and spin the magnets while they were floating. For reference, these superconductors cost about 200 euros each and the liquid nitrogen was a few hundred euros for a liter. These were some expensive toys.
After the demos, we thanked the professor and headed home for the day. After getting home, I tried to catch up on my blogs since I was two days behind. I was so focused on typing that I didn’t hear the dinner bell through my headphones. Anne-Marie had to knock on the door and get me. I apologized and told her I had headphones on. That’s what she gets when she rings the dinner bell at 7:25 and not the expected 7:30.
Dinner started off with salad and some ham pizza type thing. I also always find it interesting that their salad is just lettuce and nothing else. The main course involved chicken and mushrooms with a potato side. We finished with bread and cheese, then a fruit salad. This was one of the first dinners where I really felt like I conversed in French with everyone, even if my French was incorrect at times and I didn’t understand everything. Andre asked me about France and the various places I went to. They also gave me recommendations for places to go for the next time I visit. We also talked about my trip to Lyon I had this weekend. It was an overall fun dinner without the usual silence from me.
After dinner, I thanked A-M for the dinner and told her the mushrooms were delicious in French. I headed upstairs where I wrote this blog post. I am finally caught up on my blogs and its a nice feeling.
On another note, I am going skiing again tomorrow since I don’t have class every other week. Let’s hope I don’t fall as many times!
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
Leave a comment