Oct 26 - Trisha
With the summer long gone we are now preparing for the PEW Midstates
conference in St. Louis on Nov 3-5. The conference is being held at
Washington University. What fun the beamers will have- but for now we are
busy with the
preparation of our posters and talks.
August 8 - Garrett
Today the second box was completed! Both boxes are now ready to go, once
the finishing touches are made to the computer control program. It seemed
like a long time coming, but the finish line is in sight. Jason left for
New York. I guess that means the party can begin. Jess also returned
today from her trip to WeFest, with many stories to tell. Sorry Jason
you're missing out. Jess and Trisha are still pluggin away on the RF
factors and perfecting some of the fits. The fit keeps geting better and
better.
July 27 - Jason
This week was an exciting time for us folks on the beam. Garrett, after
quite a bit of work, finished his work on one of the two control boxes for
the computer operated vacuum pump system. One box is still on its way to
being completed and the computer program needs to be finished but it was
great to see Garrett mounting part of "the box". The end is near.
In other news Jess is plugging away determining the all-important
RF factors while planning her trip to WE FEST. Trisha continues to
catalogue and fit the lines we have already scanned as well as helping
Jess with the RF factors. I have spent much of my time playing with the
Mathcad fit program trying to get it to work well. It still has along way
to go but maybe I will get somewhere. Also in canoeing news, Garrett and
I nearly died when we tipped our canoe against a tree in the mighty Cannon
River. Luckily, we heroically saved our gear!
This is the last week that we are all together. I am done after
next week but Garrett and Jess are taking next week off so it will just be
Trisha and me. We have to make a poster presentation (typical of Garrett
and Jess to skip !) Hey, lets play with some liquid nitrogen for old times
sake!
July 18 - Garrett
Garrett say... Physics is Fun!
July 11 - Trisha
Well, things have been busy down here with the beamers. We have run some
j=4 lines and even some v=2! So things are definitely moving in the right
direction. Our beam signal pretty much died out yesterday so we refilled
our
source with some fresh Li6I this morning. With Garrett working on the new
computer interface board and Jason trying to figure out some of the
mathcad
programming, Jess and I have been busy working with good ole' beam and
nsimp! Onwards and upwards!
July 3 - Jess
Today we enter the initial stages of great success... Not only did the
reaction yield 6LiI, but we got it loaded into the source, set up a
scanfile for the weekend, and yep - you guessed it - we had some good data
this morning. The beam signal is strong and we're getting nice
peaks after only 10 or 20 sweeps! Hopefully by the end of the week
we'll have finished up the J=1 lines and started in on J=2. I
expect things to go pretty fast once we get the first few lines
figured out because the lines in the LiI are all very close together -
we've been able to scan for up to 8 lines at one time....This is all
VERY exciting....
Hexadecapole interaction, here we come!
June 27 - Garrett
After no success with KI, we changed our source to KF. It is good to see
resonance again. With our detector problems out of the way, we have now
elected to proceed with the molecule of the summer: 6LiI. Since we were
only able to purchase lithium 6 hydroxide it will take some chemistry to
get our lithium 6 iodide. Jason and I have been working on the reaction
of Lithium Hydroxide and Hydriodic Acid, but for some reason it is not
behaving as we think it should. The neutral lithium iodide for some
reason is coming out basic. Jess and Trisha have been working on runs of
the 7LiI so that once the source is replaced with 6LiI, we can get some
great data!
June 13 - Trisha
Well here is the most recent update. After getting the system
up and running ( go team!) we have been busy running scans on KI. So
far we have not been able to find any peaks but hopefully
we will see some
soon. Prof. Cederberg returned today after a trip out to the
east coast and myself and the other beamers were very glad to have him
back on the hill.
June 7 - Jason
Here is the scoop for this week. Trisha started this week just after all
of the hard work of cleaning the source was finished. Now we are ready to
finally take some data. We loaded up the source with KI and have started
to run some scans. It is the fisrt time that I have seen the procedure
to doing a scan. The programs are a little intimidating at fisrt but
after
looking over the shoulder and some practice I am starting to get the hang
of it. So far we have not found any of the lines that we are looking for
and we are not sure why. At this point we are still content with plugging
away looking for the interactions and we are not in the mood to consider
other problems that may be ruining our scans. We will see how it goes but
we may have more work ahead of us before we get any good data.
May 30 - Jess
Well, we got a great look at the inside of the apparatus today! Yesterday
Dr. Cederberg visited the molbeam lab to find the entire source region
filled with water... (There was a leak in the source cooling coils and
the whole area filled with water as a result.) Today, we disassembled the
source pump, cleaned it, and cleaned out the source region. Hopefully
we'll get things put back together soon and be able to take data!