UD hosts 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal Winners Symposium

4:36 p.m., April 19, 2006--UD and the Franklin Institute will host a symposium on “Helium Nanodroplets: Novel Finite Quantum Fluids and a Chemical Laboratory” from 8:30 a.m.-12:20 p.m., Thursday, April 27, at the Trabant University Center in honor of J. Peter Toennies, Director Emeritus, Max-Planck Institut, Gottingen, Germany and Giacinto Scoles, Donner Professor of Science at Princeton University.

Winners of the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, Toennies and Scoles' research on helium and nanodroplets led to the development of helium-nanodroplet spectroscopy, an experimental technique that allows accurate probing of molecules or clusters.

Symposium program:

8:30-9:00 a.m., breakfast;
9:00-9:10 a.m., opening remarks by UD Provost Daniel Rich and Peter Collings, chairman of the Franklin Institute Committee on Science and the Arts;
9:10-9:40 a.m., Bob McKellar, University of Ottawa, will lecture on “High-Resolution Infrared Spectroscopy of Quantum Helium Nanoclusters”;
9:40-10:10 .a.m, K. Birgitta Whaley, Unversity of California, Berkeley, will lecture on “Understanding the Relationship between Superfluidity and Spectroscopy in Helium Droplets”;
10:10-10:40 a.m., Kevin Lehmann, University of Virginia, will lecture on “Spectroscopy and Dynamics in Helium Nanodroplets: Results from the ScoLehmann Group”;
10:40-11:10 a.m., coffee break;
11:10-11:45 a.m., Scoles will lecture on “Helium Nanodroplet Isolation Spectroscopy of Small Metal Atom Clusters and Complexes”; and
11:45-12:20 p.m, Toennies will lecture on “New Horizons in Helium Nanodroplet Research.”

To register or for more information, visit [www.physics.udel.edu/~szalewic/FIsymp06] or e-mail [szalewic@udel.edu].

Article by Julia Parmley, AS '07

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