By Lauren Armstrong on December 11, 2012
Several times each year, select students from PUC’s math and science departments visit the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tenn. for research and hands-on application of what they’ve learned in the classroom. Between Nov. 15 and 30, a group of six PUC students took a two-week long trip to ORNL. The National Science Foundation, a government organization that promotes the study of science, presented this opportunity and PUC physics professor Vola Andrianarijaona chose each student that attended. April Vassantachart, Kieffer Bacani, Sarah Heczko, Josue Tobar, Richard Strom, and Robert Chi attended this particular trip, reprenting areas of study from biophysics to pre-med to computer engineering. The students were given the chance to participate in different phases of particle research, with assistance from both Andrianarijaona and ORNL scientist Charlie Havener. “The purpose of our trip was to set-up our apparatus, calibrate it, and start making measurements,” said Bacani. This gave students the opportunity to not only learn how these things are done, but to put them into practice. “The trip gave me real lab experience, and put my education to the test,” said Chi. ORNL, founded in the 1940s, has been facilitating scientific discoveries and groundbreaking research for...
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