The particle accelerator at Hope College is a 1.7 MV tandem accelerator that is capable of creating hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen ion beams. This week major maintenance was scheduled to determine the location of a small sulphur-hexafluoride leak on the main tank. With creative vacuum leak chasing techniques, we determined that the location of the leak was a worn out gasket on the stripper-gas control drive rod feedthrough (as pictured below – right). Also shown below (left) is the opened terminal and accelerating tube.
Doing More than Physics
Not only is Kamaron Wilcox (’22) a physics and mathematics major, he has been diving with distinction for Hope. Recently, Kam was selected for the 2021 Academic All-American Division III Men’s At-Large Team! Congrats Kam! Kam is one in 45 given this honor and one of 15 third-team honorees. Kam has also earned many other diving honors.
What are our majors doing now
Recently Yong-Chul Yoon (’18) and Elizabeth Lindquist (‘17) (now married) stopped by Hope College for a brief visit. They are both pursuing PhDs. Elizabeth is at Boston College in the Curriculum and Instruction program. She’s focusing on Math, Science, and Technology education with a focus on metrics and physics/engineering learning. Yong is at MIT in the Health, Science, and Technology program. He’s specializing in optical medical devices and currently working on Optical Coherence Tomography technology and imaging development.
Nuclear Group Students Participate in Recent Experiment
Gabe Balk and TJ Mann joined an international collaboration to study r-process nuclei (141, 143, and 145Cs) at Argonne National Laboratories with the CARIBU system. The Nuclear Group contributed two key pieces to the experiment: the tape target drive and control system and the barrel-shaped beta detector which has fibers to direct detector light out of SuN to photomultiplier tubes.
Another Student Publication
Alex’s paper is the 5th peer-reviewed publication with a physics major as the lead author. Influence of columnar defects on magnetic relaxation of microwave nonlinearity in superconducting YBCO resonator devices, Physica C: Superconductivity and its Applications 583, 1353849 (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physc.2021.1353849