Sixth annual summer school held at NIST

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) held its sixth annual Summer School on Neutron Scattering at the reactor on the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, Majland, from June 5–9, 2000. The course this year focused on the complementary techniques of small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and neutron reflectometry (NR) and was attended by an enthusiastic group of 32 graduate students and postdocs, predominantly from university chemical engineering and materials science departments. The course was intended to providepotential new users of these techniques with a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts and methodology, along with training in the use of the SANS and NR instruments at the NCNR. By devoting an entire week to just these two techniques, both theoretical and practical aspects, as well as applications, were covered in some depth by the sixteenNCNR staff members who lectured or assisted with the demonstrations and experiments at the NCNR's two 30–m SANS instruments and two reflectometers. Included for the first time in this year's course were demonstrations of computationaltools for planning and simulating SANS and NR experiments that are now available at the NCNR's Web site (http://www.ncnr.nist.gov).