Question: what does the accelerator do?

Hayley Smith answered on 15 Nov 2011:

The particle accelerator I work on is designed to accelerate protons.
We accelerate protons up to 84% speed of light.
When we have the protons we then transport them to a target, it’s about the size of the brick and made of tungsten.
The protons bash into this target and by a process called “spallation” (it means breaking up) the protons cause the target to release neutrons. (Having protons at 84% speed of light produces the most amount of neutrons from the target.)
These neutrons are then available for other scientists (not me! people like Andrew, in this zone) to use for their experiments.
They use the neutrons to find out about the structure of materials, how the atoms are arranged, how the atoms move and this can be useful for many things – some examples are drug discovery, materials testing (eg shampoo!), trying to develop new materials for use inside computer chips (that are used in smartphones, etc) – it’s great stuff they do!

So in essence, the particle accelerator I work on accelerates protons – this is required so the other scientists can have neutrons!

But there;s a lot of science that goes into accelerating the protons in the first place!

Hopefully that gave you a flavour of what the particle accelerator does – if I’ve not explained it well, or you want to ask further questions just comment back and I’ll be happy to try to answer them!

Thanks
Hayley