Hospital helps research group's equipment needs

By By Devin Lowell

Monday, September 8, 2008

A deal with a local hospital has given a second life to a research project that could change the way scientists view radio waves.

Students working on research with the KU physics department recently received permission from Lawrence Memorial Hospital to use its magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI, to conduct their experiments.

The students are researching the effects of strong magnetic fields on radio waves as those waves pass through ice, similar to what may be happening at the Earth’s poles. Originally, the experiment was going to be conducted using a particle detector in Ithaca, N.Y., but that would have been too costly. Using the hospital’s MRI allows the researchers to perform the experiment repeately.

The outcome of this experiment could have consequences for prior research conducted in Antarctica, which began in 1995.

When cosmic rays pass through the Earth’s atmosphere and strike the ice at the poles, they release radio waves. A strong magnetic field like the Earth’s could distort these radio waves. The Antarctic experiments have been measuring the waves assuming there is no such distortion.

Ryan Keast, Olathe junior, who wrote the research proposal, said the experiment used a stronger magnetic field to compensate for the shorter distance the radio waves traveled compared with those in Antarctica. Keast won an undergraduate research award for his proposal.

David Besson, professor of physics, compares the measuring devices the experiment uses to rabbit-ears on old televisions.

“Our rabbit ears are adjusted in a particular orientation,” Besson said. “If the waves are rotating, we have to reorient the rabbit-ears.”

The students’ experiments have also suffered other setbacks.

During the summer, the freezer in Malott Hall that had been storing the nonmagnetic icebox used in the experiment broke. Until it could be repaired, the students stored the apparatus at Checkers grocery. While in the freezer, the box was accidentally crushed. Since then, the researchers built a new box, and the experiments continue.

— — Edited by Adam Mowder

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