A total of three students from Hope College have been chosen to make presentations concerning their original research during a national meeting of nuclear physicists later this month.
Senior Joseph P. Bychowski, recently of Carol Stream, Ill., and juniors Ben B. Hilldore and Peter J. Van Wylen of Holland will participate in three different presentations at the Division of Nuclear Physics meeting being held in East Lansing on Friday, Oct. 11. The division is part of the American Physical Society, and all submissions for the meetings are peer-reviewed for content before acceptance. Selection includes competition for travel funds.
The presentation "The Modular Neutron Array [MoNA] Project" concerns an initiative involving nine undergraduate institutions, including Hope, to build a MoNA detector at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. The effort is funded by the National Science Foundation. The Hope report focuses on the 16 neutron detectors for which the college has been responsible and the data that they have provided about neutron position.
Another of the presentations, "Understanding the Bi-209 Reaction with He-6, Near the Coulomb Barrier," is co- authored by physicists from Notre Dame, the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. The third paper is titled "Coulomb Excitation of Giant Resonances with Heavy Ion Projectiles."
The "nuclear group" at Hope, which conducts student-faculty research in nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, is co-led by Dr. Paul DeYoung and Dr. Graham Peaslee. DeYoung is professor of physics and chair of the department, and Peaslee is an associate professor of chemistry and geological/environmental sciences.