THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 9, 1995 TAG: 9512090297
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
Carl Bonner takes a small rectangle of white paper and moves it slowly into the path of a spaghetti-thin beam of emerald laser light. As the paper intersects the beam, it flares, to a whitish-green that nearly illuminates a darkened Norfolk State University lab.
``Remember: I said it was high-intensity,'' said Bonner, head of NSU's laser spectroscopy division. Watching the demonstration intently is a group of high school students wearing darkened goggles. No one speaks. Then, the paper begins to smoke.
``If I do this long enough,'' Bonner said, ``it burns. It burns through.''
On Friday, Bonner and his colleagues demonstrated their experiments and sophisticated instrumentation, as Norfolk State's Center for Materials Research threw open its doors to middle and high school students from greater Hampton Roads. Today, the research center's open house continues, running from 10 to 3 in the university's Woods Science Building.
``Over the past five years, we have expanded our science research programs so much that we want to make the general public aware,'' said Heidi Ries, the center's associate director. ``We want people to meet our scientists and learn about our scholarship programs. A lot of people are not aware of the growth we've had.''
Fueling program expansion, university officials say, have been successful grant applications and the gradual accumulation of a staff of nationally known experts. The NSU expertise is particularly strong, Ries said, in development of crystals used to produce the focused light emitted by lasers, and in the formulation of advanced aerospace materials.
``In 1992, there were three of us in three labs at the end of the hall,'' said George E. Miller, materials center director. ``We carved out what we thought was an ambitious plan. Then it just took off.''
Now, there are 15 on the center's teaching and research staff. Five more will be hired within the next year and a half.
In September 1994, the university received a five-year, $10 million grant from the Department of Energy. The school will use $1.8 million of that award to build a new 10,500-square-foot materials research facility. Construction is slated to begin by March 1996.
Miller said the materials center, in cooperation with the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, a nuclear physics lab in Newport News, is working on a radically new type of X-ray device that would use crystals grown at Norfolk State to dramatically boost image resolution while reducing power requirements and entirely replacing the photographic film now used.
Also under investigation by NSU scientists are new types of lasers that could increase by a million times the amount of information stored on compact disks.
Friday morning, students from Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Hampton and Newport News bustled through the material center's halls, visiting the center's crystal growth laboratory, watching chemistry experiments, participating in physics experiments and attending planetarium shows.
On the third floor of the Woods Building, chemistry and physics teacher Erik Cofer watched as the students he brought from Gildersleeve Middle School in Newport News enthusiastically took part in a physics demonstration that recorded their physical movements on a computerized graph.
``The kids have gotten a kick out of this,'' he said. ``I wish we could stay longer.'' MEMO: Norfolk State University's open house at the Center for Materials
Research continues today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Woods Science
Building on the university campus. Admission is free and open to the
public. Visitors should come to Gate 8, next to Echols Hall, to obtain
vehicle passes and free parking. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by GARY C. KNAPP
Dr. Carl E. Bonner, head of Norfolk State University's laser
spectroscopy division, demonstrates the power of lasers by burning a
hole through a piece of paper.
by CNB