General Information

Joint with AAS (American Astronomical Society)
Jan. 5-10, 2007
Washington State Convention & Trade Center, Seattle, WA

Meeting Info

• This is AAPT’s 134th National Meeting since its founding 75 years ago.
  
  
• Registering with either the AAPT or AAS meeting will grant you access to your choice of any of the society’s organized sessions.
  
  
• Several nearby hotels are available for lodging.
  
  

Traveling to Seattle

• By Air: Seattle Tacoma International Airport is only 30 minutes from downtown hotels.
  
  
• By Car: From the West, Interstate 5 or State Route 99; from the East: Interstate 90 or Freeway 520.
  
  
• By Train: Amtrak provides service from all along the west coast and daily service to Chicago via Minneapolis. Seattle's King Street Station is located less than a mile south of downtown.
  
  

About Seattle

• Daily temperatures in January range between lows of 35 degrees and highs of 45 degrees. Although it rains about 50% of the time, Seattle has less annual rainfall than New York City.
  
  
• Seattle was incorporated in 1859 and is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest with a population of 570,000. In 1982, the city’s nickname was changed from “The Queen City” to “The Emerald City.”
  
  
• Among Seattle’s landmarks are: the Space Needle, the Smith Tower, Pike Place Market. the Experience Music Project (located at Seattle Center), the new Seattle Central Library, and the Columbia Center (the fourth tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi and the 12th tallest in the United States).
  
  
• Seattle has an educated population: more than 25% (vs. a U.S. national average of 24%) hold a bachelor's degree or higher; 93% (vs. 80% nationally) have a high school diploma or equivalent. In fact, Seattle has the highest percentage of college graduates of any major U.S. city. In addition to the obvious institutions of education, there are significant adult literacy programs and considerable homeschooling.
  
  
• Notable Seattleites:
  Chester F. Carlson (1906-1968) was an American physicist, inventor, and patent attorney born in Seattle. He invented the process of instant copying which he called electrophotography, and which was subsequently named xerography and commercialized by the Haloid Corporation (Xerox).
  Astronaut Stephen S. Oswald (b. 1951) has piloted two missions aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery: STS-42, the International Microgravity Laboratory-1 mission, flown in January 1992; and STS-56, the second Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-2) mission, flown in April 1993. Oswald commanded STS-67, the second flight of the Astro observatory (Astro II), which flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in March 1995. This mission established a mission duration record for Space Shuttle at 17 days. With the completion of his third space flight, Oswald has logged over 33 days in space.
  
  

More Seattle Info
http://www.seeseattle.org/
Also see the Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle
And Wikitravel at: http://wikitravel.org/en/Seattle