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Lew Riley

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Professor at Ursinus College in Physics & Astronomy
Pre-Engineering Coordinator
lriley@ursinus.edu
Mastodon: @lewriley@mas.to
he|him

Fall 2023 Courses

Spring 2023 Courses

Spring and Summer 2023

Mill Heinze (UC Physics ‘24), Jake Kosa (UC CS ‘25), and Alyssa Himmelreich (UC Physics ‘26) traveled to the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University for a first attempt to measure Coulomb excitation of the very exotic nucleus 42Si, a nucleus that has twice as many neutrons as protons. The rate of 42Si nuclei produced was not quite enough to complete the measurement. In July, Ian Conroy (UC Physics ‘24) and Jake Kosa returned to FRIB in July for the successful second attempt!

Meanwhile, Mill Heinze and Ian Conroy spent 5 weeks at the Fox Lab at Florida State University extending the experimental study of 53Cr by combining the Super Enge Split Pole Spectrograph with the CeBrA array of CeBr scintillator detectors to collect the gamma rays emitted by excited 53Cr following the 52Cr + d → 53Cr + p transfer reaction. This data will provide additional details of the excited states populated in the reaction.

Summer 2022

Mill Heinze (UC Physics ‘24) and Dylan Simms (UC Physics ‘23) were at the Fox Lab at Florida State University, using the 9 MV Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator to shoot a beam of deuterons at a 52Cr target. They studied the neutron transfer reaction 52Cr + d → 53Cr + p by measuring the momentums of protons produced in the reaction with the Super Enge Split Pole Spectrograph. Their work will improve the experimental picture of neutron shell structure beyond the N=28 major shell.