Lessons from Grandpa: The Corn Palace and the Neutrino
By Colin Weber, University of Minnesota
The Corn Palace, located on Main Street in the town of Mitchell, South Dakota, glared yellow and green under a cloudless blue sky in the summer heat. Although the walk from the parking lot was short, Grandpa and I were eager to be inside and out of the sun. We were greeted by the unmistakable aroma of popcorn as we entered and found a place to sit. We had been chatting since our breakfast at Marlin’s and had covered almost everything, from how different family members were doing, to how the Mitchell Kernels’ baseball season had gone, to how much rain was forecasted for the next week. The only topic left was my PhD research. Grandpa had evidently been saving this one for the grand finale, because at the next pause in the conversation, the entire room had the privilege of hearing an 88-year-old man exclaim, “So tell me again, why on Earth are you studying neutrino cross sections?”
Having finished his education before the neutrino was discovered, Grandpa had never even heard of the particle until I taught him the word during the first year of my PhD program. However, as his question in the Corn Palace made clear, teaching someone a new word is something quite different from helping them appreciate why it’s worth a lifetime of study. After all, why should he care about neutrinos, let alone a neutrino cross section that describes how these nearly undetectable particles interact with everything else? At first, I had no answer to his question. We had found a wall between us, and I wondered if it could be overcome.
A Pillar of the Community
Reflecting as we left, I gradually realized that an answer was right in front of me. You see, just like my branch of academic research, the Corn Palace can be nearly impossible to appreciate — at least to an outsider. Many have heard of it, and some have seen it, but few have been truly enchanted by it. The name overpromises, conjuring up an image of an immense castle built entirely of corn that would look right at home in a vegetable-themed version of the board game Candyland. Although the real Corn Palace is indeed palace-sized, it underdelivers in its construction. It is, in fact, hardly made of any corn at all. The little corn that is used can be found glued to sections of the facade in a mural depicting the Palace’s annual theme. A more accurate name for the attraction would be “The Corn Wall.”
But from the perspective of a local like Grandpa, who has lived his entire life nearby, the Corn Palace couldn’t be more important. It hosts dozens of sports events each year, from gymnastics and dance competitions to the Mike Miller Basketball Classic in December. On some of the summer’s hottest days, country concerts bring people in from the surrounding communities. For those in the know, the Corn Palace’s murals aren’t just walls, but living works of art, created anew each fall to celebrate themes such as agriculture, hunting, or other aspects of South Dakota life. Most importantly, the Corn Palace is where you take your family when they visit, as Grandpa had always done. The Corn Palace is no tourist trap. It is a pillar of the community.
I have many fond memories of going to the Corn Palace growing up. Sometimes my family and I attended events, but most often we stopped as we drove down Main Street to look at the murals and walk around the block. When I was young, I thought nothing of these visits, but today the Corn Palace occupies no small portion of my heart. Had Grandpa orchestrated these regular visits over many years so that one day I would proudly proclaim my affection for the Corn Palace? Probably not intentionally, but the result is still evident.
Grandpa had shown me how to guide someone to an appreciation for something that is initially irrelevant to their life.
After realizing Grandpa’s strategy, I started to wonder if something similar could work with my research. After all, almost no one “gets” neutrino cross sections at first. Their importance hides behind clouds of jargon, as is true with most academic research. Understanding the jargon takes years, so most people have little interest in, or get discouraged from, even trying. The topic seems impenetrable.
But from my perspective, neutrino cross sections couldn’t be more compelling. In order to make ever-more precise measurements, my collaborators and I need to repeatedly invent new tools and techniques, and pursue ideas that have never been tried before. But my favorite part about working on neutrino cross sections is seeing how my small efforts contribute ever so slightly to our understanding of neutrinos as a whole. The possibility of adding a tiny piece to the enormous puzzle is what gets me out of bed each day, because what an extraordinary puzzle it is. Just from the few pieces we’ve placed, we think that neutrinos may provide the key to answering why there is something in the universe rather than nothing. The best part about studying neutrino cross sections is the fact that I’m contributing, even in my small way, to answering this question.
Can I teach Grandpa to appreciate this? That making small contributions to neutrino cross section research is what’s required to help us understand the bigger picture, and possibly explain why we’re here at all? Maybe. I can’t bring him to the lab, but I can do what he did for me, with our visits to Mitchell’s Corn Palace. When we talk on the phone each week, I can engage him personally by telling him how my research is going. Once in a while, I can remind him of the big picture. If we can accumulate these little interactions over as many years as we can, I hope that eventually he will come to his own appreciation for why I study neutrino cross sections. By then, he will have answered the question he posed amidst the aroma of popcorn between the corn-hung walls of the World’s Only Corn Palace: “So tell me again, why on Earth are you studying neutrino cross sections?”
Acknowledgements: This essay was written for the Science Policy & Advocacy for Research Competition (SPARC) at the Universities Research Association.
