If you've been reading symmetry for a while you may remember our reports on the Cyclotron Kids -- Heidi Baumgartner, Peter Heuer, and German Diagama -- who came home from astronomy camp three years ago with the dream of building a cyclotron. (They're still at it; we'll have an update on the Kids as well as other amateur cyclotron builders in the August issue of symmetry.)
So we were pleased to see this story from Minnesota Public Radio on students from the University of Minnesota with an unusual summer job: building parts for a neutrino detector. It's a smaller version of the giant detector, as tall as a six-story building, that will be installed deep in Soudan Mine in Minnesota as part of the Fermilab-based NOvA project.
In a 100,000-square-foot warehouse near campus, 19-year-old Dylan Skerbitz is cleaning the ends of a white PVC panel the size of a garage door. He's using a corona arc discharge machine, which looks like a high-tech hair dryer spitting out a purple flame.
"It creates an electrical spark, and it burns off any excess dust or particles so glue will connect better with this," he says.
Each one of these PVC panels -- there will be about 500 stacked together in the finished detector -- is made up of rows of tubes. Each of the tubes will be fitted with long strands of fiber optic thread. Those threads will pick up barely detectable flashes of light when neutrinos do a sub-atomic dance through the detector. A computer will record the findings.
Not exactly a do-it-yourself project, but still impressive, especially considering that the UM team includes both physics buffs and liberal-arts types. The mini-detector will be used to test the technology of the maxi-experiment. The MPR website has photos.
