It was my first day at the cyclotron, and I stood in an underground lab area that smelled like sawdust and solder, sectioned off behind the heavy black vinyl of a laser safety curtain. I squinted at the chunky piece of glass held delicately between my fingers—the lab chief had called it a quarter wave plate . From certain angles, its translucent surface gleamed like a tinted mirror, reflecting a bizarrely yellow-green hued world.
brought to you by the American Physical Society