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Tandem Lab Cont.

The parking lot of the Tandem Lab on Wednesday evening.

photo by Bruce Hammer

Professor Hammer whose magnetic resonance imaging experiment is housed in the Tandem Laboratory was allowed onto the site to remove his car on Wednesday evening while rescue workers were still using the parking lot as a staging area. "I was afraid they were going to tow me," Hammer said. This morning when Hammer's SUV appeared on the cover of the New York Times, friends and colleagues began phoning to make sure he had not been injured in the accident. He sent out a mass e-mail in reply saying, "I am OK. Magnets did not quench." in reference to the superconducting magnets used in his experiments which need to maintain a certain temperature to remain stable.

Bruce Hammer surveys the dammage out of his laboratory window.

photo by Bruce Hammer

Professor John Broadhurst of the School of Physics and Astronomy was director of the Laboratory from 1972-1978 when it was operating as a particle accelerator. Since the lab pre-dates the bridge, he recollected that the bridge and the lab always had an uneasy coexistence. "We were having trouble with the building sinking because they were building the bridge and excavating the footings." Broadhurst also commented that the wall built by the army corp of engineers to contain sand from the annual dredging of the Mississippi river protected the building from the majority of the debris from the recent bridge collapse.

Broadhurst also pointed out that the facility owed the wing of the Tandem Lab that now houses Hammer's experiments to the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers (SACE). There were originally two labs, one that housed the LINAC, the world's first proton accelerator and the other that housed the Tandem Accelerator. The LINAC building stood where USACE wanted build one of the footings for the bridge. Since the LINAC was at the time off-line, the University agreed to have the building knocked down provided the USACE build equivalent lab space onto the Tandem Laboratory.

Photo of the Tandem laboratory parking lot. The wall at the end of the parking lot was built to contain sand from dredging of the river. It also helped prevent debris from the bridge disaster from falling on the laboratory.

photo by Bruce Hammer