Uncabling the MoNA array

On our first day at the NSCL (Monday May 24), along with other members of the MoNA collaboration, including several other undergraduate students, we removed all of the signal and high voltage cables from MoNA in order to reconfigure and move the array.

To keep the cables from getting tangled up, they had to be draped on the floor as they were removed. After a full morning of this work, we took a break for lunch with group members at Owens Hall dining center.

Artemis Spyrou moves part of the array into place. Cables are draped over the floor to keep them organized.

Second day of MoNA reconfiguration, Tuesday May 25. Group members work to align and position the two array halves

Thomas Baumann, Jim Brown, and Jesse Snyder lift one section of the array to the beam height

Soldering the LISA PMT bases

Lewis Elliott (left) and Phil Kasavan (right) are pictured here soldering the circuit board voltage divider bases (the small green circular boards) to the signal and high voltage lines for the photomultipliers.

Greetings! We will be posting pictures and updates of our progress both here at Westmont College and at Michigan State University's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

In the first two weeks of our summer research, we have constructed the components for and assembled three neutron detectors for the Large multi-Institutional Segmented Array (LISA) that will eventually be used for experiments studying exotic nuclei at Michigan State. Using cosmic muons, we have taken preliminary position spectra and coincidence spectra for the three detectors. We have also measured the light attenuation length using a Cobalt-60 source.