Classroom Questions

Questions for ‘Photons map the atomic scale to help medicine and more’

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Physicist Mary Upton lines up equipment just right in preparation for an experiment using X-rays emitted by the Advanced Photon Source.

Argonne National Laboratory

By Science News Explores

To accompany feature “Photons map the atomic scale to help medicine and more”

SCIENCE 

Before Reading:

1.     What is an atom?

2.     What are some ways to study things that are very, very small?

During Reading: 

1.     What type of subatomic particles travel around the ring at the Advanced Photon Source?

2.     What properties of photons make them useful for studying materials?

3.     How fast do electrons in the beam at the Advanced Photon Source travel?

4.     What keeps the electron beam traveling in a circle?

5.     How are the X-ray beams generated at the Advanced Photon Source?

6.     What are two ways that X-rays interact with samples at the Advanced Photon Source facility?

7.     What did Mary Upton and her colleagues learn about how temperature affected the nickel-based material they were studying?

8.     What did Erica Ollmann Saphire and her team learn using the Advanced Photon Source?

9.     How might the findings by Saphire’s team help researchers fight Lassa fever?

10.   What changes are planned for the Advanced Photon Source?

After Reading: 

1.     If you could use the Advanced Photon Source to study any type of material, what would you choose, and why?

2.     Why do you think scientists travel from all over the world to use the Advanced Photon Source in Illinois rather than building one of their own?

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