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Glossary

Other Sciences and Technologies

While technology has been a driving force for nuclear science research, this field has similarly pushed the limits of technology. Likewise, advances in other scientific disciplines have been important to the progress in nuclear science. Development and advances in chemistry were essential to the discovery of most of the transuranic elements. This technology is still used to separate chemical species and allows studies of nuclei produced in accelerator or reactor experiments. Advances in solid state physics have produced larger and better silicon and germanium detectors for use in x-ray, gamma-ray, and particle spectroscopy. Advances in ultralow-temperature physics have produced superconducting magnets. They are used by the Michigan State University Cyclotron, by the superconducting radio frequency acceleration cavities at the Argonne National Laboratory’s ATLAS accelerator, at the Jefferson Laboratory, and at the new RHIC collider.

  last updated: August 9, 2000 webmaster