2008 Woodie Awards
Hendrix College Operates One of World's Largest Ring Lasers
Ryan Strickland
Issue date: 9/15/06 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
Over the summer, three Hendrix students worked with Physics Professor Dr. Robert Dunn to build one of the world's largest ring lasers. Sophomore Adam Jacobs, junior Neil Kopper, and senior Caitlin Bagby helped Dunn build Hendrix College's second ring laser about ten miles north of Conway. Although ring lasers may not seem very important at first, the new laser that was built this summer puts Hendrix on the map for Physics research. The new ring laser is one of the three largest in the world and on par with the ones in Germany and New Zealand.
There were several reasons for building a new ring laser outside of Conway but the most important one was less vibration noise. The first ring laser at Hendrix was built in the basement of MC Acxiom, but too many vibrations from students and faculty walking around the building made any data collected during the day useless. A ring laser is able to detect rotational vibrations in the Earth's crust that Seismometers and other vibration detectors cannot.
Building this new ring laser did not come without problems. Jacobs, Kopper, and Bagby helped build the laser outside of town this summer. This ring laser has the shape of an equilateral triangle with mirrors and other electronics at each apex that reflect the beam to the next apex. The entire ring laser was built underground and the corners of the triangle were connected with PVC pipe. Soon after being built, one of the corners sank farther into the ground and broke the PVC pipe, allowing moisture to get into the pipe and rendering the ring infrastructure useless. If moisture gets into the pipes, the water vapor scatters the laser beam and the beam cannot gain enough energy to be useful. An entire new ring laser infrastructure was built on top of the previous one, but not quite as large.
Dunn performed research with the ring lasers this past year to detect rotational vibrations caused by hurricanes when they reach land. He hypothesized that the energy a hurricane loses when it reaches land is transferred into the ground and actually puts a rotational force on the ground. Dunn hopes to publish his findings within the next year.
Jacobs helped Dunn write and modify computer programs that analyze the data collected by the ring laser so that the data is useful. Kopper spent most of the summer engineering the design for the infrastructure of the ring laser and the corner boxes, which contained the mirrors and other electronics. Bagby did research on hurricanes and gathered data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to compare to the data collected by the ring laser.
There were several reasons for building a new ring laser outside of Conway but the most important one was less vibration noise. The first ring laser at Hendrix was built in the basement of MC Acxiom, but too many vibrations from students and faculty walking around the building made any data collected during the day useless. A ring laser is able to detect rotational vibrations in the Earth's crust that Seismometers and other vibration detectors cannot.
Building this new ring laser did not come without problems. Jacobs, Kopper, and Bagby helped build the laser outside of town this summer. This ring laser has the shape of an equilateral triangle with mirrors and other electronics at each apex that reflect the beam to the next apex. The entire ring laser was built underground and the corners of the triangle were connected with PVC pipe. Soon after being built, one of the corners sank farther into the ground and broke the PVC pipe, allowing moisture to get into the pipe and rendering the ring infrastructure useless. If moisture gets into the pipes, the water vapor scatters the laser beam and the beam cannot gain enough energy to be useful. An entire new ring laser infrastructure was built on top of the previous one, but not quite as large.
Dunn performed research with the ring lasers this past year to detect rotational vibrations caused by hurricanes when they reach land. He hypothesized that the energy a hurricane loses when it reaches land is transferred into the ground and actually puts a rotational force on the ground. Dunn hopes to publish his findings within the next year.
Jacobs helped Dunn write and modify computer programs that analyze the data collected by the ring laser so that the data is useful. Kopper spent most of the summer engineering the design for the infrastructure of the ring laser and the corner boxes, which contained the mirrors and other electronics. Bagby did research on hurricanes and gathered data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to compare to the data collected by the ring laser.
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