Gettysburg College
Physics Department
 
Undergraduate Research

Proton Accelerator

The proton accelerator laboratory is home to an ongoing building project.  The accelerator is a Van de Graaf accelerator, first built in the 1950's.  We received it from the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory in 2003, and it has been under construction since.  A Van de Graaf accelerator is a unique type because a motor driven belt transfers the charge to a terminal, which develops the large electric potential responsible for moving the protons.

When fully assembled, the accelerator is about eleven feet long and a foot and a half tall (the picture shows the accelerator mounted on a table).  It is capable of accelerating protons to energies of 250,000 electron volts.  Experiments such as Rutherford Scattering and Proton Induced X-ray Emission can be conducted when the accelerator is fully operational.

The proton accelerator will continue to help students in the Gettysburg College Physics Department begin undergraduate research.  In the future, it will also be useful in areas such as fundamental and applied physics, radiobiology, nuclear reactor engineering and chemical analysis.