Newswise — NEWPORT NEWS, VA – The Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility scientists have brought the Solenoidal Large Intensity Device (SoLID) experiment to life with a detailed 3D-printed model, small enough to sit on a desk, offering a tangible glimpse into the potential of the future spectrometer.
SoLID is a proposed detecting device to exploit the full potential of Jefferson Lab 12 GeV upgrade. It aims to study the inner 3D structure of the proton and neutron through high-energy collisions. It also looks to investigate the role of gluons and search for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
But scientists involved in SoLID needed a way to help people visualize the proposed spectrometer. Argonne National Lab Senior Physicist and SoLID Collaborator, Zein-Eddine Meziani proposed to make a 3D model. Melanie Cardona, a Ph.D. student in Meziani’s group, happily offered to create the 3D-printed model.
“In the old days, trying to make this model would be difficult to have all the details in there,” said Jefferson Lab Hall A and C Staff Scientist and SoLID Project Manager, Jian-Ping Chen. “Today, with 3D printing, this became easier to accomplish.”
In the late 2010s, 3D printing started to gain popularity in universities. Cardona saw this as a great opportunity to gain experience using 3D printing software.
“It’s important for Ph.D. students to diversify their skill set as much as possible during grad work,” Cardona said.
In 2018, Cardona’s research group owned a small, basic 3D printer - far less advanced than printers today. She began by spending several weeks contacting researchers to determine the layout of the model and creating a design using 3D modeling software. She then began printing pieces using polylactic acid plastic.
Since the printer was small, larger components, such as the magnet, would take nearly 15 hours to print.
“Issues would come up where the printer got clogged and a print would stop in the middle of the night,” Cardona explained. “At one point, I thought about implementing a camera that could monitor it overnight.”
Cardona printed dozens of pieces and assembled them together using super glue. As a full-time Ph.D. student, she only had time to work on this project during her spare time and took six months to complete it.
“It’s quite a bit of work to do full-time since she had Ph.D. work to do,” Chen explained.
The model was built by Cardona on the 1/30th scale of the real-life version. A plastic figure representing a 5-foot-7-inch person sits on the model to provide perspective on the project's size relative to an average human.
“We can make it much easier for people to see the size of the detector compared to a person in there so you can see in perspective how big each detector looks,” Chen said.
Scientists found this model useful, and it also helped showcase the proposed spectrometer to the DOE.
SoLID was highlighted in the 2023 Long Range Plan for Nuclear Science, Nuclear Physics portfolio of potential experiments that could make a significant impact to scientific discovery in the next decade.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science (DOE SC) is evaluating SoLID in relation to all projects in the SC portfolio.
Further Reading
SoLID
Jefferson Lab 12 GeV
By Xavier Gardner
Contact: Michelle Alvarez, Jefferson Lab Communications Office, [email protected]
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Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. JSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, Inc. (SURA).
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science
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