NUCLEAR PHYSICS WORKSHOPS IN WARSAW

On March 16, 2019, participants of the Erasmus + "Science around us" project from our school took part in activities organized by the Heavy Ion Laboratory in Warsaw and the Institute of Physics of the University of Warsaw. 22 students had the opportunity to study the structure and physical foundations of cyclic accelerators, and then visited the Warsaw cyclotron.

The next workshops concerned the properties of ionizing radiation, its registration methods and examples of its practical applications.

The students got acquainted with a method of recording muons, which are a component of cosmic radiation, and saw such a detector at work.

They also learned about the types of nuclear radiation and their properties, and then experimentally measured their range in the air and the effectiveness of various shields depending on the type of radiation.

Using a Geiger-Muller counter, they checked the radioactivity of samples of various rocks, as well as man-made objects, such as Vaseline glass lampshades containing uranium compounds or watches with hands and numbers coated with radium compounds.

They also cracked down on the belief that cell phones emit ionizing radiation.

They got accquinced with the basics of XRF spectrometry, in which an X-ray tube is used to knock out electrons from the internal shells of the atoms of the substance being tested, and then a detector detects the characteristic X-ray radiation emitted by these atoms. The spectrum obtained in this way allows to identify the chemical composition of the tested sample without its special preparation or destruction. The coordinator tested her ring, which indeed turned out to be silver. We also listened to a lecture on nuclear reactions and methods of production of isotopes, also of elements that do not exist in nature.