Day 1 SNOLAB Research Experience -- December 11, 2017

I arrived at my destination early in the morning (a little before 7am) only because Samantha Kuula, the communications officer for SNOLAB allowed me to follow her along a winding road which led to the Vale mine and SNOLAB surface facility.  Lucky for me, she always does a Tim Horton's drive through along the way -- you know I need my coffee.

We made our way to the SNOLAB building where I met Blair Flynn, the outreach coordinator, who I had met the night before at supper.

The first thing I had to do was sign a liability waiver form (do I really want to do this!?) and then sign in so that the organization knows exactly who is in the mine for the day.  You have to mark when you go into the mine and when you leave.

After dressing in reflective coveralls, safety glasses, putting on big rubber boots and a hard hat with ear protection, we were ready to walk from the SNOLAB building over to the Vale mine building which is where the CAGE is (the rustic elevator-type loading dock that takes you kilometers under the earth).  We also had to double bag my notebook, camera, and lunch containers! While we waited we met a Mechanical Engineer and had a great talk about women in science.  Her and I were both able to share job interview experiences where we were definitely discriminated against because we were women.  Times are changing, but there are still barriers that women sometimes face when working in the world of science, technology, engineering and math.

It was good that we were having such a deep discussion because it didn't give me any time at all to think about being scared to go into the cage.  The buzzer went and I was ushered into a rectangular cube that was packed tightly with humans.  We started descending before I knew it and it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.  It was dark, so I didn't see the rock zooming past me.  It didn't take long at all for us to be two kilometers underground! I was chewing gum and my ears equalized about three times.

We weren't there yet.  This is where the rubber boots came in.  We had to walk along the real mining areas, which they call the drift for about 20 minutes.  There was quite a bit of water and mud to go through.  Then we had to wash the boots, go into a shower room to take off our drift clothes, shower and wash completely and put on clean suits.  Nothing that was worn in the drift can come into SNOLAB.  Here's a picture of Blair in the same clothing I was wearing as well.

We began our general tour of the facility.  I got to see a little bit of each of the projects.

First things first, though!!  This is a clean space -- so the first thing you need to learn is how important the cleaners are.  Here is Brenda, who has been working at SNOLAB for 20 years.

Everything that comes into the lab has to be washed, cleaned and bagged.  It is labelled with it's destination or the researcher that it is going to.

I found out today that it is more than Physicists down here.  There are chemists -- the ones who graduate from University, but also Chemical Technicians that have a diploma from a Tech school much like SaskPolytechnic.  Here is a newly built chemistry lab for the work and testing that needs to be done on the materials used for the experiments being done at SNOLab.

There are also Machinists and Millwrights that are needed for the construction of the structures needed for the experiments.  Remember -- this is a clean space -- so the machining shop is immaculate.

(side note:  this is a specially constructed wheelchair ramp made for Stephen Hawking when he came to visit two years ago)  #starstruck

There were so many experiments that I saw today, it is sometimes hard to keep track.  Everything was so amazing and the people working there were always so willing to share with me what they do at SNOLAB.