Camp News : Campers : Nuclear Physics Boot Camp Preps Future Scientists

Date Added: 22-10-2007

Michigan State University's Exotic Beam Summer School turns students into full-fledged scientists .  Read the excerpt below.

LiveScience.com - New York,NY,USA

By Annie Jia

19 October 2007

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

The metamorphosis of a student into a full-fledged scientist takes years, but the Exotic Beam Summer School helps accelerate so to speak the process.

In August 2007, 45 nuclear physics students from eight countries gathered at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University for the one-week boot camp to subject themselves to the transformation.

There, the students delved into the world of nuclei, the cores of atoms. The journey of nuclei begins at the cyclotron, an accelerator that speeds isotopes to up to half the speed of light. The nuclei flying out of the cyclotron smash into a target made of beryllium, resulting in millions of flying particles per second containing dozens of different isotopes.

Read the entire article:

http://www.livescience.com/technology/071019-bts-summer-school.html