I have been meaning to make a trip out to Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) for over a year and since I was headed in the direction of Plano on Saturday, and this was basically on my way, I figured now was as good a time as ever to stop by.
Fermilab is a particle physics laboratory and as much as I love all that geeky science stuff, anything related to physics is so far beyond my grasp that I can do nothing but be in awe of anyone who even remotely understands this stuff. Even being on these grounds was intimidating! I’m not even going to begin to try to explain what goes on here as I haven’t the slightest clue so if you’re interested definitely check out their site or the wikipedia page, I’m sure it’s fascinating if you can grasp it. I do know that beyond all the science research and programs, they routinely host lectures and arts performances.
My main reason for coming out here to photograph was because I’ve seem some pretty amazing images of Wilson Hall and was hoping to find my own unique take on the building. What I didn’t realize is that the grounds are enormous and there are a number of interesting buildings to photograph, many of which represent mathematical constructs. Even the power lines, which line up with Wilson Hall, are built to represent the Greek letter π. This is so cool! I seriously love that there was so much thought put into the designs of each building.
I spent a couple of hours wandering around to various buildings. It was an insanely windy day with a little more cloud cover than I was hoping for but I did what I could. I took far more images than necessary, as usual, so I’m only going to share the ones I consider the best here, if you’d like to see them all stop over by my Flickr set here. And after reviewing the map a little more thoroughly, I realize I missed a whole lot of the grounds, hopefully I can make a trip back here sometime soon.
The first images are of Wilson Hall.

The next couple are the Meson Detector Building (whatever that is!).


The next two are of the Silicon Detector Facility

I believe this is a pumping station.

The next few are of The Feynman Computing Center.

And these last few are the Broken Symmetry sculpture at the entrance.