Back in 1996, I was a member of the team from Venice High School in Los Angeles that won the Department of Energy's National Science Bowl Championship in Washington D.C. Our winning team (seen in the photo to the left with our coach) was presented with a most challenging dilemma: our choice of prize. The top prize according to the sponsors was a week-long trip into the heart of Alaska where we could observe a working petroleum research center. Our other choice was a visit to Berkeley Lab. As Californians used to warm weather we naturally shuddered at the thought of spending part of our summer freezing in some arctic backwoods, so our choice of the mysterious Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Lab as our "prize" destination was easy. This in spite of the fact that none us even knew what the ALS was!
beamline to experiment
endstation. This was followed by an overview of the different kinds
of research done here. We also had the chance to work side-by-side with
members of ALS engineering, scientific, and survey and alignment staff.
Near the end of the week, we split into two groups--one went to Beamline
6.1.2 with John
Brown to look at the parasite that causes malaria using an x-ray
microscope, while my teammate David Dickinson and I joined Eddie Moler
and his colleagues on Beamline
9.3.2. Although David and I, shown at right getting our first look at
an experiment endstation, only participated in a small part of an experiment,
it amazed us how all of the features and effects we had been discussing
and reading about showed up as a piece of concrete data. I was so impressed
by this experience that a year and a half later, my first idea of what to
do for the summer was to come back to the ALS and work on that beamline!
at atomically flat substrates.
Later on in the summer we'll place the film sample inside the experiment
endstation and focus a beam of x-ray light from the ALS on it. When the
x rays encounter the thin film, they will knock the electrons out of the
atoms on the surface of the sample. This is called photoemission, which
is named for the photoelectric effect. The ejected electrons, called photoelectrons,
scatter off of neighboring atoms and produce a diffraction pattern in the
process. Just like an optical diffraction pattern, this photoelectron diffraction
signal may be "inverted" to reveal the structure of the film's
surface. Eventually, the films will be studied in a water vapor environment
to gain a better understanding of the water-film interface. This information
could then be generalized to similar but more complex systems such as biological
membranes.
Amazingly,
the simple experiment that I am participating in this summer will perhaps
contribute to our understanding of very real and complicated phenomena.
However, I've learned from working here that the simplifying approximations
and error allowances that one makes as part of the real world of research
must be constantly scrutinized to insure that one's "wonderful results"
truly represent reality. This vigilant objectivity is the hardest part
of my job. I sometimes long for the certainty of an answer "in the
back of the book," but science, I now realize, is almost as focused
on the process by which results are obtained as on the results themselves.
Nonetheless, I sincerely hope our experiments will turn out well in the
weeks ahead!
At the endstation on Beamline 9.3.2
MicroWorlds
Contents
| Registration & Comments
Questions
and Support
Privacy and Security Notice
Last updated
August 13, 2001