Notre Dame

It was a dark and stormy morning. Lightning flashed and the Davis Bahcall scholars made the dangerous trek to Notre Dame. (Ok, so it was just lightly sprinkling and it wasn't that scary at all but that doesn't make a cool start to the story.) When we arrived we listened to a lecture on the three accelerators there as well as what they hope to achieve with them. Then we went on a tour of the facility where we saw their most powerful accelerator, Tandem (10 MeV), and also their newest, St. Ana, which was just finished last fall. After the tour, we listened to another lecture about the history of discovering what the sun is burning and then their plans of a new accelerator called DIANA. DIANA is hoped to be a lower power (50 KeV - 1.5 MeV) accelerator that will be 200 times faster than LUNA. If they don't get the funding then they will reconfigure an existing unit. DIANA will be set up in a new area on the 4850 level at SURF. After eating at the campus smorgasbord of restaurants, we listened to a few presentations by some interns, one being Brice Frentz, a former Davis Bahcall scholar. Upon returning, we each gave a presentation on something that intrigued us during the trip through a conference call with Peggy Norris. Our day ended with a four hour drive to Chicago and our last hotel. Tomorrow we will have a free day in Chicago and then Sunday morning we will part ways after a month of learning amazing things, from amazing people, in our little group of equally amazing people. This has been an experience I will not soon forget. Thanks to all who made it possible.

- Daniel Ostraat, Canton, SD