Trip 6 June 2026 · Written up 6 June 2026 · Last expanded 29 September 2026
I am taking Brutus on an intellectual journey this summer. The first stops were the photonics labs at North Carolina State University and Duke University, and Durham was the second of the two.
The Duke half of that trip is the thinnest thing in my notes from the whole summer. I know I went, I know it was the second stop, and the detail I came home talking about came from the other end of the Triangle.
The detail I came back with belongs to Raleigh
At NCSU I saw an “interferometer/photonics setup in a box”, built as an aid for instruction in a quantum computing course. That is an NC State story and not a Durham one, and I have told it properly in the Raleigh write-up, so I will not relitigate it here beyond saying I still think it would be a great kit for Buckeye STEM students (and for Georgia Tech, while I am asking).
Why the mascot is along for this
Calling it an intellectual journey sounds like a joke, but the framing buys something: a mascot gets carried into rooms that most undergraduates back home will never see the inside of, and then the photograph does the asking for them, which is most of the point of the tour.
So I owe Durham a proper visit, as opposed to a stop, and the literal open question is what is on a bench in that Duke lab that a first year in Columbus should have been shown.
Photographs
Links
The Duke photonics lab, and the Raleigh write-up where the interferometer box is covered. To be added.
Open entry
This page is not finished, and is not meant to be. I add photographs, people and links as I dig them out, so it keeps growing after publication. Why the whole site works this way is on the colophon.
