Davis-Bahcall class visits the 4850 Level

Last Thursday this year?s class of Davis-Bahcall scholars completed their 12 days of study and research at the Sanford Lab, but not before visiting the Davis Campus at the 4850 Level, where they set up a muon detector and took background radiation measurements with a Geiger counter.

?We collected good data,? Deputy Education and Outreach Director Peggy Norris said. Background radiation data from the 4850 Level is important for physics experiments there.

Davis-Bahcall scholar Sophia Elia has followed the Sanford Lab since her freshman year in high school. Last summer she was an intern here, but this was her first trip underground. ?I can?t believe we got to see the LUX detector,? Elia wrote in an e-mail, before the scholars left for Italy where they will visit Gran Sasso National Laboratory. Elia, who calls LUX ?my favorite experiment in the world,? graduated from Rapid City Stevens High School in May. She?ll be a freshman physics major this fall at the University of California-Berkeley.

Davis-Bahcall scholars focus on physics, but they also study other disciplines, and they meet engineers, technicians and others involved in underground research. Abe Schwartzrok, a physics major at South Dakota State University, noted an extraordinary degree of cooperation among various disciplines at the Sanford Lab. ?Everyone?s so supportive of each other,? he said. ?It?s encouraging for me, going into science, to see everyone so pleasant and patient and willing to answer questions.? 

Leading-edge research, however, is not done without debate. The young scholars learned that lesson firsthand, when they sat in on a lively, sometimes contentious working meeting of the Center for Underground Theoretical Physics (CETUP), a program for theoretical physicists that meets in the Black Hills every summer.  ?We all kind of know that?s how science works, but it was interesting to see it happen,? said Esteben Rodriguez of Lake Andes, S.D. He?ll study aerospace engineering next year at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

After their stint in Italy, the scholars will fly to Chicago for sessions at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago and Notre Dame University.

The Davis-Bahcall program is named for two pioneers of solar neutrino physics, Nobel Laureate Ray Davis and theorist John Bahcall. Participants are recent South Dakota high school graduates or college students who have just completed their freshman year at a South Dakota school. The state Department of Education and the Sanford Lab run the program, with support from 3M and the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium. For more information go to www.doe.sd.gov/secretary/scholarships.aspx