Busy days for 4850L video link
Activities up top and deep underground Thursday and Friday demonstrated a range of education opportunities at the Sanford Lab, including new ways to use the videoconferencing unit in the Davis Campus on the 4850 Level.
On Thursday in the Yates Education Building, Deputy Education and Outreach Director Peggy Norris welcomed 25 physics and chemistry students from high schools in Chamberlain, S.D., and McIntosh, S.D. Norris talked to the students about dark matter before connecting them by video with Science Support Specialist Mark Hanhardt, who answered students questions from the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter detector nearly a mile underground.
Norris, by the way, is working with Chamberlain High School through an American Physical Society grant, which she?s using to introduce students to concepts in modern physics.
The students also constructed water-treatment experiments. Using gravel, sand, cotton, cloth and other materials, they designed and built filters to clean water pumped from underground. ?It was good for them to see the range of activities we do here?not just physics,? Norris said. ?They learned how biology and chemistry relate to water treatment.?
Later, a tour of the Yates Shaft hoist room demonstrated for the students how 1930s engineering is supporting 21st century physics.
On Friday, University of North Carolina (UNC) physicist John Wilkerson, a principal investigator for the Majorana Demonstrator experiment, used the videoconferencing unit to administer a doctoral final exam to UNC graduate student Patrick Finnerty, who has worked on Majorana. LUX Spokesperson Rick Gaitskell, a physicist from Brown University, also happened to be underground. Though Majorana is a neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment, Finnerty?s presentation was related to Majorana?s sensitivity to dark matter. Gaitskell brought 25 years of dark matter hunting experience to the conversation. No problem for Finnerty. He passed the test.
So did the videoconferencing unit, which has the potential to link Davis Campus researchers with students anywhere in the world.