Monday, July 18, 2011
Ankur Toshniwal
Peddie Student '12
Summer Research with Dr. Calaprice @ Princeton University
Over the course of the previous month Dr. Calaprice (my PI), Ms. Helen Ju (his secretary), and I discussed many many things prior to beginning lab. I endured a brutal 3 hour Lab Safety seminar, read papers that made Scarlet Letter seem like Dr. Suess' Green Eggs and Ham, and we conferred all the necessary things such as where I would park in Princeton, where to eat lunch, and what I would be doing in lab. The night previous to July 18, my start date, I realized Dr. Calaprice (my PI) and I had never agreed on a time for me to come in in the morning. This posed a slight problem. I erred on the side of punctuality and showed up at 7:30am to find that I was alone with a single custodian. I went to the second floor and waited outside Dr. Calaprice's office till about 8:30am till finally his Ms. Ju led me to meet one of the employed researchers so I wouldn't make sleeping arrangements in the hallway. I met Brooke filling out some paper work and she took me on a quick tour of the laboratories. I was surprised when we began talking in technical terms that I was actually able to keep up with the lingo. She showed me the project she was working on: the Borexino Neutrino Detector. Luckily I had originally began my research with this project so I knew the background, unfortunately it was 8:45am and normally my brain and speech powers were limited to choosing between Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and telling my mom to wake me up in 30 minutes in 30 minute increments. I held it together till Dr. Calaprice finally came in and he briefed me on some recent news in geochemistry and what I would specifically be working on. As a brief summary, I will be working with Geoffrey Lou Guray who graduated from Princeton in 2010 and is now a 2-year employed researcher at Princeton. He works mainly with the rare gasses such as Argon, Helium, and Neon. To explain the motivation for the Dark Matter Detector which is currently being developed by the team I'm working with I'll give an outline of the theory.
There are many ways that scientists know Dark Matter exists, but I find the easiest one to understand and comprehend is the Cluster Coma theory. When scientists look into outer space they are able to identify all the luminous matter in galaxies throughout the universe. Based on light signatures they are able to accurately predict the mass of all the luminous (matter giving off light) matter. Based on calculations, they found that the amount of mass the luminous matter makes up is nothing close to how much the galaxy would need for gravity to hold it together. This means that there is an unknown type of matter making up for all the mass needed for gravity to hold the galaxy together. This unknown matter is labeled Dark Matter primarily due to the fact that we cannot see it. In order to identify what this matter is, labs across the world strive to build detectors so that we may detect this unknown particle and unlock a new chapter of our universe.
Princeton happens to be working on one of these detectors. In order to avoid false signals, the liquid and gas Argon which the detector is filled with must be ultra pure. Argon is found in our atmosphere in small percentages, however atmospheric Argon has radioactive isotopes that would trigger false signals in the detector. However, Argon found underground has much larger amounts of the stable isotope Argon-40 and less amounts of the radioactive isotope Argon-39. I will be helping Geoffrey obtain some of this Argon gas through various filtering and purifying methods.
After discussion of what I will be doing in lab Geoffrey showed me his lab room. Filled with many gas tanks and several pieces of machinery later to be identified as a Turbo Pump and a Leak Checker, the lab was not too big nor too small. Geoffrey was at the time trying to store a small amount of underground natural gas from a gas well in Colorado in a small chamber so he could send it to Harvard for mass spectrometry to analyze the Helium-3 to Helium-4 ratio which would help tell us where exactly the underground gas was extracted from. This is where much of the nuclear physics stopped, and the engineering began. In order to do this requires a simple, yet tedious and very very time consuming task. First copper wire had to be cut and bent to the specific shape that we needed our plumbing to go. Fittings had to be attached to each end of the copper wires to insure that air would not contaminate our sample of gas nor the main tank. Valves had to be screwed and tightened with wrenches so we could control the path of the gas through the plumbing. We haven't done it yet but we'll have to pump out all the air from the tubing with a vacuum pump because otherwise there is atmospheric air inside the plumbing. I will go into more detail with the next post of the procedure.
I got to leave at 5:00pm and from now on my start time is 9:00pm. So far all the people I have met are really encouraging and naturally wicked smart. After my first two days, I can tell there will be a pretty even mix of conceptual science and practical engineering physics.
Thanks,
Ankur Toshniwal
Ankur Toshniwal
Peddie Student '12
Summer Research with Dr. Calaprice @ Princeton University
Over the course of the previous month Dr. Calaprice (my PI), Ms. Helen Ju (his secretary), and I discussed many many things prior to beginning lab. I endured a brutal 3 hour Lab Safety seminar, read papers that made Scarlet Letter seem like Dr. Suess' Green Eggs and Ham, and we conferred all the necessary things such as where I would park in Princeton, where to eat lunch, and what I would be doing in lab. The night previous to July 18, my start date, I realized Dr. Calaprice (my PI) and I had never agreed on a time for me to come in in the morning. This posed a slight problem. I erred on the side of punctuality and showed up at 7:30am to find that I was alone with a single custodian. I went to the second floor and waited outside Dr. Calaprice's office till about 8:30am till finally his Ms. Ju led me to meet one of the employed researchers so I wouldn't make sleeping arrangements in the hallway. I met Brooke filling out some paper work and she took me on a quick tour of the laboratories. I was surprised when we began talking in technical terms that I was actually able to keep up with the lingo. She showed me the project she was working on: the Borexino Neutrino Detector. Luckily I had originally began my research with this project so I knew the background, unfortunately it was 8:45am and normally my brain and speech powers were limited to choosing between Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and telling my mom to wake me up in 30 minutes in 30 minute increments. I held it together till Dr. Calaprice finally came in and he briefed me on some recent news in geochemistry and what I would specifically be working on. As a brief summary, I will be working with Geoffrey Lou Guray who graduated from Princeton in 2010 and is now a 2-year employed researcher at Princeton. He works mainly with the rare gasses such as Argon, Helium, and Neon. To explain the motivation for the Dark Matter Detector which is currently being developed by the team I'm working with I'll give an outline of the theory.
There are many ways that scientists know Dark Matter exists, but I find the easiest one to understand and comprehend is the Cluster Coma theory. When scientists look into outer space they are able to identify all the luminous matter in galaxies throughout the universe. Based on light signatures they are able to accurately predict the mass of all the luminous (matter giving off light) matter. Based on calculations, they found that the amount of mass the luminous matter makes up is nothing close to how much the galaxy would need for gravity to hold it together. This means that there is an unknown type of matter making up for all the mass needed for gravity to hold the galaxy together. This unknown matter is labeled Dark Matter primarily due to the fact that we cannot see it. In order to identify what this matter is, labs across the world strive to build detectors so that we may detect this unknown particle and unlock a new chapter of our universe.
Princeton happens to be working on one of these detectors. In order to avoid false signals, the liquid and gas Argon which the detector is filled with must be ultra pure. Argon is found in our atmosphere in small percentages, however atmospheric Argon has radioactive isotopes that would trigger false signals in the detector. However, Argon found underground has much larger amounts of the stable isotope Argon-40 and less amounts of the radioactive isotope Argon-39. I will be helping Geoffrey obtain some of this Argon gas through various filtering and purifying methods.
After discussion of what I will be doing in lab Geoffrey showed me his lab room. Filled with many gas tanks and several pieces of machinery later to be identified as a Turbo Pump and a Leak Checker, the lab was not too big nor too small. Geoffrey was at the time trying to store a small amount of underground natural gas from a gas well in Colorado in a small chamber so he could send it to Harvard for mass spectrometry to analyze the Helium-3 to Helium-4 ratio which would help tell us where exactly the underground gas was extracted from. This is where much of the nuclear physics stopped, and the engineering began. In order to do this requires a simple, yet tedious and very very time consuming task. First copper wire had to be cut and bent to the specific shape that we needed our plumbing to go. Fittings had to be attached to each end of the copper wires to insure that air would not contaminate our sample of gas nor the main tank. Valves had to be screwed and tightened with wrenches so we could control the path of the gas through the plumbing. We haven't done it yet but we'll have to pump out all the air from the tubing with a vacuum pump because otherwise there is atmospheric air inside the plumbing. I will go into more detail with the next post of the procedure.
I got to leave at 5:00pm and from now on my start time is 9:00pm. So far all the people I have met are really encouraging and naturally wicked smart. After my first two days, I can tell there will be a pretty even mix of conceptual science and practical engineering physics.
Thanks,
Ankur Toshniwal
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