Thread | Brutkey

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

I survived my incredibly long day at Simon Fraser University, and had a lot of super interesting conversations (molecular motors whaaaattt?!) Also SFU is a wildly weird and beautiful campus

A view looking up a wide staircase that makes a 90 degree turn, and a weird round open space above it. Everything is concrete and very geometric.

A view looking across a huge open space underneath a giant roof two stories up, but open on the sides to the outdoors. There are neat parallel lines on the ground from the sun coming through.

A huge quad area with lots of super wide staircases and a weird elevated hallway with lots of windows. The sky above is blue.

A huge rectangular courtyard surrounded by an elevated concrete narrow building on two sides. There's a rectangular pond in the middle, with a skim of ice on top, and a very annoyed seagull standing on top of the ice. It's sunny and the sky is bright blue.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

SFU likes over-the-top caution signs

A big sign in the dining hall that says "CAUTION DO NOT FEED WILDLIFE" and then has the outlines of a bear, a deer with HUGE antlers, a raccoon, and a pigeon.

A sign standing on a walkway that says "PLEASE FIND NEAREST ENTRANCE AND REMAIN INDOORS ON YOUR JOURNEY ACROSS CAMPUS". It was maybe -2C and there was a teeny tiny bit of frost in a few places.

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Their astronomy outreach program is AMAZING (despite only having 1 astro prof). Paid staff run a modern telescope with perfect equipment, people use a virtual queue to get a turn at the big telescope, and the local RASC amateur astronomy chapter set up their own telescopes around the outside for everyone to look at while waiting. There's scientific art scattered around, and great student volunteer opportunities. It's amazing! Anybody have a few million $ for my university to do this too?

Looking up at a very shiny new large telescope white telescope with a black dust shield and a lot of wires and camera equipment on one side, inside a white dome.

A telescope dome sitting in a courtyard under the blue sky. There's a powers-of-ten art exhibit on the ground, a spectral lines art project on the concrete benches, and a bunch of star maps on some concrete walls further on.

A sundial that incorporates an analemma for more accuracy in timing. The sun is shining through the analemma making a sun-shadow line that perfectly tells the time when projected onto a curved metal piece with timestamps on it.