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Take Your Kids to Work Day ...

mrs2a50

mrs2a50

Pretty much the best.ever.
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Apr 12, 2007
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is tomorrow! I'm so excited! No, I don't get to bring Roxy to work :) but I do get to give tours of our laboratory/facility, and it's SO much fun! I've been gathering little factoids to share with the kids, and I thought some of you might find them interesting as well:

  • Our main hallway from door to door is an eighth of a mile long
  • The building size is roughly equivalent of 4 Costco buildings
  • Our supercomputer can do 163 trillion calculations per second. It would take your home computer 8 hours to do what the super computer can do in 1 second. It would take a person, with pen and paper, 5 million years
  • Our new computer, which will be online this fall, will be 21 times faster than the current one
  • We use liquid helium to cool some of our instrumentation. We go through 208,000 liters of liquid helium a year. If you converted that to gas, we could fill over 30,000 balloons a DAY (over 11 million balloons a year)
And there you have it. That's where I work :thumbsups
 
I have A LOT of students gone tomorrow for that. I am not sure that any of their parents work anywhere as cool as you though, Julie!

That sounds like a crazy big computer.

(in a note related to computers--I caught the news headlines on the radio yesterday saying that a business in Tulsa had a computer stolen that was worth like $350,000 which seemed crazy expensive to me. But then, I read your post and figure your computer is worth a lot more than that--but I am guessing it isn't quite as portable--Ha!)
 
Holy cow, where do you work? That sounds awesome! I heard recently there is a helium shortage... Will that affect you?
 
Um, our new computer is roughly $11 million :giggle And definitely not as portable!

bderby said:
I have A LOT of students gone tomorrow for that. I am not sure that any of their parents work anywhere as cool as you though, Julie!

That sounds like a crazy big computer.

(in a note related to computers--I caught the news headlines on the radio yesterday saying that a business in Tulsa had a computer stolen that was worth like $350,000 which seemed crazy expensive to me. But then, I read your post and figure your computer is worth a lot more than that--but I am guessing it isn't quite as portable--Ha!)
Click to expand...
 
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It's a Department of Energy laboratory. And no, the helium shortage is not expected to affect us. We have a system where we collect the helium gas that the instruments give off, and then convert it back to liquid. So while we do have to buy some helium, we also produce it for ourselves.

Lynnette said:
Holy cow, where do you work? That sounds awesome! I heard recently there is a helium shortage... Will that affect you?
Click to expand...
 
Sounds cool! Have fun tomorrow with all the kiddos!

I'm sure they will love those facts. They'll come in handy when they brag to their friends about the cool computer at mom or dad's work.
 
sounds fun! It would drive me nuts to have my kids cramped into my small office though :D
 
totally cool facts!
ones that kids will understand and certainly get a kick out of!
what a fun job!
 
So cool!! Can I pretend my parents work there and come to visit??? :D
 
How fun, Julie! Our school district doesn't recognize today as the Take Your Kids to Work Day; they have officially designated a day in late June instead. Of course, DH and I both work from home, so the kids are already at our work pretty darn often. LOL
 
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