Mar
18
March Café Scientifique with Ian Bushfield
Posted by: jdewitt | March 18, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Dear Café Scientifiquers, our next café will happen on Tuesday March 26th, 7:30pm at The Railway Club. Our speaker for the evening will be Ian Bushfield, the executive director of the British Columbia Humanist Association and a passionate advocate for science outreach and education. The details of his talk are as follows:
Weighing Paper With Lasers
Until the 1990s, a narrow band of radiation in the far-infrared had remained largely unexplored. Terahertz radiation’s unique interaction with water molecules and weak interaction with most plastic and fabrics make it an ideal probe for a wide range of applications, from security scanners to death rays. One area of interest is in product testing and quality control. In this talk, Ian Bushfield will describe his masters of physics work in developing a technique to use terahertz radiation to obtain the thickness, weight, and water content of paper, for application in paper manufacturing. These non-contact sensors offer industry a way to improve accuracy and production speed by replacing sensors that rely on physical contact with paper reams. This work was supported by the NSERC Industrial Postgraduate Scholarship, SFU, and the Honeywell Vancouver Centre for Excellence.