May 01, 2009
Bowling
Green, Ky. - A class project by Western Kentucky University physics students will benefit the 
international scientific community working at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The project to develop a software control system for an Automated Gas Environment System (AGES) that is being built at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) places WKU at the forefront of this kind of scientific collaboration, according to Dr. Edward Kintzel, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
“The visibility of the project is very high at the lab,” he said. “It is the exception that undergraduates would be involved in a significant way at the lab and that’s what makes it unique.”
The three students – Jacob Baxley of Hartford, Nathan Campbell of Beaver Dam and Gordon Gameson of Murfreesboro, Tenn. – will be presenting a poster about their project next week to attendees of the International Conference on Neutron Scattering who will be touring the SNS as part of their meeting in Knoxville, Tenn.
The work being carried out by these students will be used in the General User program at the SNS on the Powder Diffractometer (POWGEN, beamline 11-A) by a host of international scientists, Kintzel said. “By virtue of their involvement in the AGES project, these WKU students have impacted global science,” he said.
Dr. Doug Harper, who teaches the Physics 318 course, said the project is the first of its kind for Oak Ridge National Laboratory to allow a student group control over a software system. “It’s a big experiment for them and a big opportunity for WKU,” Dr. Harper said.
SNS, built by a partnership of six U.S Department of Energy laboratories, is an accelerator-based neutron source that provides the most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial development.
Neutron-scattering research has a lot to do with our everyday lives. For example, things like medicine, food, electronics, and cars and airplanes have all been improved by neutron-scattering research.
Neutron scattering is a useful source of information about the positions, motions, and magnetic properties of solids. When a beam of neutrons is aimed at a sample, many neutrons will pass through the material. But some will interact directly with atomic nuclei and “bounce” away at an angle, like colliding balls in a game of pool.
In the project for the SNS Sample Environment Group, the WKU students have written software that allows a user to safely direct a specified flow of a mixture of gases to a sample under investigation at the SNS. Their work is phase one of a multi-phase project.
WKU students and faculty have visited the SNS this year. And the project will continue this summer when Campbell interns at Oak Ridge through the Higher Education Research Experiences program. “I’ve really enjoyed the experience,” Campbell said. “I’m going to go down there and learn what I can.”
Dr. Kintzel, who conducted post-doctoral research at the SNS, said this project and Campbell’s internship opens the door for additional opportunities for WKU students.
“The long-term goal relating to sample environment is to create the conduit where our students are involved in assisting with the creation of novel sample environments for the SNS,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”
More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu and at http://wkunews.wordpress.com/. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
For information, contact Edward Kintzel at (270) 745-6200.
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