Quick Shot

Now in its 31st year, LLE’s Summer High School Research Program continues to maintain its goal of exciting high school students about careers in the areas of science and technology by exposing them to research in a state-of-the-art environment. The program, directed by Dr. Stephen Craxton for the past 22 years, has an impressive record of 391 students, many of whom have gone on to receive post-graduate training in a variety of fields from physics to medicine. Shown are four of the fourteen recent students with their projects. In the upper left is Max Neiderbach (Geneseo High School), advised by Michael Sharpe (pictured with Max in the OMEGA Target Bay at port H8), Vinitha Anand, and Robert Peck. In the upper right is Michele Lin (Attica Senior High School), advised by Michelle McClusky, displaying a piece of CR-39, a unique plastic used in MIT’s MRS (magnetic recoil spectrometer) diagnostic on OMEGA. Her project investigated a new CR-39 etching technique, which promises to decrease the amount of time required to process MRS and other data. In the lower left and advised by Tanya Kosc is Ji-Mi Jang (Pittsford Mendon High School) who is shown using a green (532-nm) laser to investigate the Raman scattering spectra of materials that have undergone laser-induced damage. In the lower right is George Morcos (Rush Henrietta High School), advised by Kenneth Marshall, shown looking under a crossed polarizer at the microscopic texture of the first UV-transparent glassy liquid crystal mixture fabricated in a 2-in.-diam device. The material could be used to fabricate a UV distributed polarization rotator or, alternatively, liquid crystal circular polarizers for OMEGA that would be fabricated either on a single piece of glass or as a free-standing film.