Mount Hood in the distance
By Hamish Johnston in Portland, Oregon
I arrived here in Portland on Friday evening and spent the weekend sightseeing with my brother.
Spring also arrived here in the Pacific Northwest, with the daffodils up and the cherry trees in full bloom – the sort of March we’ve come to expect in England, but not this year.
City of bridges
While it’s warm, it’s not warm enough to melt the snow on Mount Hood, which I can see from my hotel window – at least I think that is Mount Hood.
This morning I took the tram over one of Portland’s many bridges to the twin crystal towers of the convention centre for day one of the American Physical Society March Meeting – a solid week of solid-state physics.
I have sat in on two press conferences so far, one on topological insulators and the other on the physics of catastrophes. More on both later…it’s time for lunch in the pressroom.
