The idea of having a name for the
map came together with my speech in the voting day to convince
people that the map was a good one. "We are here to hike... ops! To
study! But eventually, we may hike in the mountains. So, we need a map.
And that's the map I found in the library!" The idea was that all
topics covered in the school were somehow represented in the map.
Moreover, all the problems the attendees were working on should be in
the map. At the end, I made another joke. "No other school had a map as
a design for the t-shirt. We would be the first one. Also, this idea
covers many fields in physics. So, we fulfil the PRL criteria of
originality and broad audience, and therefore, this design should be
published!"
In the voting day, many other designs appeared. Around 10 different
ones. Many of them very nice. Fortunately, the map was the most voted
one.
It was then decided that the final design would be responsability of
myself, Miles Stoudenmire and Rafael. Miles had produced another design
that was voted a lot: Two electrons in a hot tub. Many symbols like the
wave function Psi and Dirac's bra and kets where hidden.
He used the drawer of the Acrobat and volunteered
to help me with the final version of the map. (Thanks a lot, Miles!!!)
So, in the same day at night I was bugging Miles and Rafael to help me
with the final design. This program, the drawer of the Adobe, is
awesome. So many resources and friendly. I was very impressed. Miles
helped me a lot with many of the drawings: The Serpent, the Sun and the
Buffalo. Also, it was his idea to make the wave-pairs faraway in the
BCS Gulf and closer in the BEC Gulf. He also cut the mountains from the
scanned file I drew by hand. Drawing and shading them on the Adobe
drawer was too painful.
The final result was more or less like below (for better visualization,
get the .pdf file).
I spend lots of time that night to get near the final version. I
even lost the cellebration of Taylor Hughes' birthday. (Sorry Taylor, I
called Daniel and Luke to know where you guys were, but they didn't
answer the phone. Their fault! :) )
At the end, I got many response from everybody. Vladimir Cvetkovic and
somebody else had the idea of putting a frame on the map. One of those
in which the ends roll over itself. I then put like as in the picture,
so
it would look like an old parchment.
It was very nice to see many other peoples trying to collaborate. That
was exactly my intention. A design of everybody. Robert Beaird, for
instance, had the idea of making a treasure-hunt like map. Leo have the
idea of the city, but instead of having a ficticious one, Boulder
would be featuring in the map. Jila and Gamov towers as well as The
Sink would be very easily drawn and representative. I really
appreciated that idea, but, as before, I decided not going along with
that because of the lack of time. I
good job would take another week. Maybe this idea can fit in a
future
school.
I would like to thank Ion Garate for helping with some names in the
map. (You know, English is not my mother tongue. I think it is neither
his...)
Also, I would like to thank Judit Romhányi for helping me with
the final color. I really appreciate the final design (see also the
.pdf files: color and color+blur). She used some program in her Mac.
In concluding, it was very fun to draw this map. (Except
for
all the trees in the FM old forest in the original scanned file I
drew by hand. It was very painful.) Much of it has the
cartoon picture we build about the various phenomena. I would like to
discuss the physics involved and how/why each part of the map is
like/where it is, but I believe it is better to leave it for each one's
imagination. Also, one can create its own mithology and legends in this
world. (Like renormalization group fishes that only flow/swin away from
critical waters... ok, enough of lame things.)
I hope this small diary can give further motivation for those in
future Boulder schools engaged on this nice activity of designing a
t-shirt. As you could realize (I hope), it can engage a large number of
people and be very fun.
Cheers,
José A. Hoyos
July 26th, 2008
Durham, NC