CUPC 2007

This past weekend I attended the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (and Burnaby), British Columbia, and it was a hoot!

What tops my list is hearing the talk from Dr. Lene Hau who used Bose-Einstein Condensates to slow, stop, and even transport light!  This has gotten me interested in the entire field of BEC and atom trapping and I’m now in contact with Dr. Kirk Madison at UBC about a potential summer job in his lab next year (and maybe grad school after).

I must complain that the majority of the people I met from the University of Calgary were tremendous douchebags – and I don’t say that out of a school rivalry.  We listened to one of their talks (which wasn’t even that good), and midway through he insulted another university (over a plagiarism scandal that was likely unrelated to the paper he was referencing) and after he muttered that the audience was “boring” when they didn’t ask him any questions.  Another guy from their school was running through the hall on our floor and some chick yelled “you’re a nice guy, I just don’t want to fuck you” (or something to that extent), who also is rumoured to have gotten his funding cut for getting a tattoo when he was supposed to be presenting his poster (which was pretty abhorrent – ie. didn’t present anything expect what sounded like a dreamt up unresearched paradox, handdrawn, with links to pictures).  And even in talking with them they were just not nice.  We did meet one nice UofC Physics guy, so I don’t want to shame them all, just the majority of them.

As for the rest of the conference though, it was fantastic.  We saw TRIUMF and SFU Physics labs.  I presented and was later told by someone that he heard my talk was good – as in someone passed along good words about my talk.  Overall it was a great experience.