Possibly related:
Violinists perform for master
ASMSU approves furniture, Halloween event funding; tailgating bill fails
Colleges tap into Facebook to issue alerts
Study: Students drawn toward free services when researching
Assistant professor benefits from plant researcher's tutelage
ASMSU approves furniture, Halloween event funding; tailgating bill fails
Colleges tap into Facebook to issue alerts
Study: Students drawn toward free services when researching
Assistant professor benefits from plant researcher's tutelage
Study: Students drawn toward free services when researching
Assistant professor benefits from plant researcher's tutelage
Researchers design improved Cyclotron magnet prototype
To non-nuclear physics majors, what happens in the MSU's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory is about as mysterious as nuclear physics itself.
"Mostly, what we do here is basic science, how the universe works and how things are put together," said Geoffrey Koch, lab communications manager at the Cyclotron.
Researchers at the Cyclotron recently designed a superconducting magnet prototype that can withstand high radiation environments, which will ultimately propel rare isotope science into the future.
"It's important because it allows this next generation accelerator to move forward, and having been a part of that is really exciting," said Jonathan Delauter, a Cyclotron research and development physicist.
Delauter worked on the magnet for his master's thesis - Radiation Resistant Superferric Magnets for Fragment Separators.
Before one can understand the significance of the magnet, they must first know what the cyclotron is.
A cyclotron is a device that spins around faster than half the speed of light.
Isotopes, which are like "flavors of an element," are then expelled from the Cyclotron and hit a target material to create a reaction, Koch said. From this reaction, new isotopes are created, some that don't necessarily exist on earth.
"We study the products of this reaction," Koch said. "We try to make sense of them and draw conclusions from new isotopes."
Scientists study these isotopes to fill in the gaps in the evolutionary record of the elements.
"There are still lots of open questions," Koch said, adding that these studies also contribute to applied science such as accelerators that are used to treat cancer, national security's use of nuclear forensics and quantum computing, the next generation of computer processing.
The Cyclotron's magnets are not strong enough to withstand the heat and radiation produced by the accelerator machine.
"If the conductor is capable of 100 kilowatts and it can only operate at 50, it's not very efficient," said Al Zeller, head of the Cyclotron research facilities department.
Zeller said if there was a nuclear war, only cockroaches would survive.
"Think of people as the insulation and cockroaches as the conductors," he said, adding that their new design is scalable and can withstand high radiation environments.
"The system we developed can be used for any size and can be scaled up to a much larger machine," Zeller said.
The biggest magnet they want to build will be a cylinder that is one and a half meters long and about one meter in diameter, he said.
The current magnet prototype is roughly the size of a shoe box.
Zeller, Delauter and other contributors are pleased with the prototype.
"We've been working on this magnet for about four or five years," Zeller said. "It's been a back and forth process, so obviously I'm quite happy to see results."
Published on Friday, May 18, 2007