Issue of
August 13, 1997

Physics Tank to come down later this month

The demolition of the Physics Tank, also known as Bloch Hall, starts Aug. 20, says project manager Don Larsen. The canopy around the 40-year-old building, nicknamed the "Hat Box," will be torn down starting Aug. 18. Larsen says a breaker on a large excavator, which is like a backhoe on tracks, will be brought in to pound away at the old lecture hall. "It will just keep popping away at the concrete," Larsen says. The building, which was named in honor of Felix Bloch, a physicist who won Stanford's first Nobel prize in 1952, is already closed for asbestos removal. SR