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Ideas for summer students

This is a page under development now, being prepared by CUA Nuclear Physics Group in order to start thinking in ideas of projects for summer students. Please feel free to

Effects of humidity on aerogel refractive index

One of our concerns for the long term use of aerogel, in the Kaon Aerogel Detector, is how the aerogel will behave. We know from papers that it is manufactured by drying silica gel. So, in principle, the tiles can absorb water again and change their densities. As their densities are directly related to their refractive indexes, it is important to understand any change we may find.

The tiles we have are coated by an hydrophobic thin layer of material, so we have a protection on them already. And the trays of the detector will be rightly stored. But studying the water absorption and its effects on the aerogel properties would be an interesting way of understanding better our detector.

The first idea would be to construct an isolated box to have one aerogel tile submitted for a long time into high humidity. From time to time, we would measure the mass and refractive index of the tile to see any change on its properties.

What we would need to buy (and a first look in options with prices):

• Humidifier
  • HomeDepot simpler Warm Steam Vaporizer - U$25
  • HomeDepot with little of control - U$40
  • McMaster 3 Gallon - U$63
• Humidifier controller
  • McMaster HVAC Service - U$27 - is that what we need???
• Plastic box to create the controlled environment