Summer Sunday Visitors Get Inside Look at NSLS, NSLS-II

July 24, 2011

When the volunteers have as much fun as the visitors, that’s total success!

As part of the Lab’s Summer Sunday program, over 900 visitors attended the NSLS/NSLS-II open house on July 24, 2011, organized and carried out by volunteers from the Photon Sciences Directorate, with help from friends and family members.

The volunteers numbered over 100, a record for this volunteer-run event. All hands were needed, however, as this was likely the most ambitious Summer Sunday ever offered, primarily because NSLS-II was open to the general public for the first time since construction began in 2009.

Visitors thoroughly enjoyed the day, as indicated by comments on surveys collected in Berkner by Summer Sundays coordinator Nora Detweiler, of the Community Relations Office. Everything – and everyone – got high marks, and the average stay was close to four hours.

Here is a list of the day’s activities:

• Intro talks in Berkner
• Guided bus tours from Berkner, to NSLS-II, across to NSLS, and back to Berkner
• Seven displays in NSLS-II, most of them interactive
• A close-up look at the magnet girder in the NSLS-II storage ring
• Two displays in the NSLS lobby
• Two outside displays
• Guided NSLS tours
• Quiz and raffles leading to souvenirs and prizes
• Balloons and magnet drawings given to visitors
• Program of summer student talks, Introducing Synchrotrons into the Classroom (InSynC) teacher talks, and science talks, the full package offered three times during the day in the Office of Educational Programs auditorium

Lisa Miller and Gretchen Cisco, both in Photon Sciences, coordinated the student talks:

• Lili Tang, Monitoring X-ray Beam Loss
• Niaja Farve, Creating Nanometer-sized Beams of Light at NSLS-II
• Genny Kuczewski and Maria Sirenko, “Fill it up” with Biofuels: How Cars Can Run on Plants
• Natalie Delpratt, The Effects of Fluoride on Bone as a Treatment for Osteoporosis
• William Willis, How Algae and Sunlight Can Lower the Price of Gas
• Andrea Jackson, The Effects of Dopamine D2 Receptors and Chronic Alcohol Intake On Object Recognition and Brain Structure in Mice
• Daphne Meza, Understanding How ALS Mutations Cause Spinal Cord Neurons to Die
• Raman Budhani, Removal of SO2 from the Atmosphere: A Source of Acid Rain
• Jerilynn St. Cyr, Synchrotron Light Used to Study Nitrogen in Pine Barren Soils of Long Island, New York

Scott Bronson, Office of Educational Programs, arranged for local teachers and their students to describe the InSynC program at NSLS, involving the Elwood, Islip and Longwood school districts. The talks were titled “InSynC: Bringing Big Science into the Classroom” and were given by:

• Diana Soehl, Elwood School District
• Ashley Bloch, Islip School District

Physicist Peter Siddons and biophysical chemist Lisa Miller gave the science talks on “Mystery-solving Forensics of Tomorrow at Today’s Light Source.”

And here is the list of volunteers:

— Mona S. Rowe, Photon Sciences Communications Manager

2011-2536  |  INT/EXT  |  Newsroom