Students on the Beamline

oops forgot to post this one it was still in draft mode.

This Saturday I had a wonderful time working with a group of students from Evan Hardy at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). It was a group of 4 students in grades 11 and 12 and thier teacher. This group of students started planning thier project at the beginning of January. The project was to test band-aids that were infused with nanosilver. Nanosilver, which is silver that is broken down to a very small size...nano to be exact (which is 1 billionth the size of a meter). So prior to Saturday the students went over to the Agriculture building on campus and cultured some bacteria in an agar solution. They then put a filter with a layer of nanosilver on the live bacteria cultures. The nanosilver was given some time to kill the bacteria. When the students came on Saturday they were then testing if and how the silver changes shape and composition once it reacts to kill the bacteria. The students used the HXMA beamline, along side one of the regular HXMA beamline scientist. The students got some great data, which they now need to analyzed with the scientist. After they are done their analysis they will present a powerpoint and poster of their experiement and results to the CLS staff.

Another exciting thing for this group of students was the fact that a television was doing a CLS special, and therefore wanted to tape the students experience. The camera crew was there observing for most of the day...and in some cases getting in the way.