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Reprinted from other members of Engineering College Magazines Associated
Researchers at the James R. Macdonald Laboratory at Kansas State University are probing the inner workings of the atom. Built in 1967, the Macdonald Laboratory houses four primary particle accelerators. In many of the experiments, an atom is sped up and smashed into another target atom, and the outcomes of such high-speed collisions offer insights into the behavior of electrons. The Tandem Van de Graff Accelerator, built in the 1960s, generates medium velocity collisions. By "medium velocity," Tracy Tipping, a researcher at the center, explains, "Try approximately five percent the speed of light. At that speed, you could travel from New York City to Los Angeles in 1/35 of a second."
Tipping goes on to explain the physics behind the accelerator. Negatively charged ion beams are sent towards a positive charge source, then stripped of their elections and given a positive charge, and finally sent speeding out due to the repulsive forces generated The ions are then steered by powerful magnets toward a collision chamber. In the world-class caliber Macdonald Laboratory, researchers hope to gain a better understanding of high energy processes. Such knowledge is essential for members of the scientific community studying such areas as astrophysics and nuclear fusion.
Tipping summarized the activities in the lab, saying, "We are building fundamental puzzle pieces (in atomic energy research). Hopefully others take our research and put the information we gather together."
--Prasanth Reddy
Kansas State Engineer
Spring 1995
Behind a set of doors in the office wing of the chemical engineering department is a dimly lit room with Batman paraphernalia hanging from the walls. A table is covered with papers, experiments, and artificial body parts, and a rubber hand protrudes from a closed filing cabinet.
Welcome to the Biological Altitude Testing Laboratory, the home of Dr. Igor Gamow and his colleagues. He created the Gamow bag, a portable chamber that relieves altitude sickness in mountain climbers, and he developed the High Altitude Bed. Gamow and others are currently working on a running shoe that conserves metabolic energy better than any product currently on the market. He is also improving the Magic Fluke, a human powered swimming machine invented in the early '70s that mimics the powerful movements of a dolphin's tail.
Gamow chose an untraditional path to a professorship at the University of Colorado. After dropping out of high school, he danced with the National Ballet in Washington, D.C. and worked part time as a motorcycle courier for the Eisenhower administration. He then returned to Boulder and earned a degree in biology and later a doctorate in biophysics and microbiology at Denver.
After hearing of Gamow's experiences before coming to the CU, it's not surprising that he considers himself a storyteller. He says, "Anthropologists have been trying to define what it means to be human for centuries. At one point they defined humans as tool makers, but clearly many animals make tools. Then they tried to define humans as users of language, but clearly many animals and some insects have language. But to date I challenge anyone to find an animal or insect that can spin a yarn about beautiful princesses, dark forests, once upon a time. The essence of being human is simply to be able to tell a story."
--Alicia Karspeck
Colorado Engineer
Spring 1994
