Educational Virtual Beamline 2 (eVBL2)

The eVBL (Educational Virtual BeamLine), which allows high-school students to study Thomas Young's classic double-slit experiment, has been a suceess. To compliment the education program now using the eVBL, VeRSI's Collaborative Cyber Infrastructure group and the Education and Outreach team from the Australian Synchrotron have worked together to produce a smaller, portable eVBL (eVBL2).

Using laser light, the eVBL2 allows students to study the principles of how detectors on synchrotron beamlines work (see photo above). The eVBL2 is a compact, portable unit that enables users to capture images of diffraction patterns produced from a green (532nm) laser and then make measurements over the captured image.

Like most detector software, the eVBL2 is split into two main parts - capture and process. The capture function controls a HD web camera that is capable of capturing the area of the detector plate and displaying it on either a small netbook or a large display. Once the student has finalised their captured image, they can save it to their computer for later processing.

In the process section of the eVBL2, the student is able to measure fringe spacing, which is not calculated automatically. They do this by drawing lines on the image, and then using the length of the line to calculate the size of the space. Angles can also be calculated by clicking on three points on the image.

As with real detectors, the eVBL2 detector can produce noise on the image. The software provides tools that can manipulate the image in order to maximise clarity during measurement-taking. Some of these tools include colour inversion, black-and-white conversion and low- and high-point settings. 

For information on the first version of the eVBL, click here. 

For more information, please contact Michael D'Silva.

Project details

ID number  AS/P/040

Project title  Virtual Beamlines – Service Integration and Extension

Start date  June 2011 End date  June 2012

Lead institute  Australian Synchrotron

Principal investigator  Dr Dean Morris – Head of Operations

Partner PIs and/or participating institutions  Dr David Cookson – Science Management

VeRSI executive sponsor  Dr Ann Borda – VeRSI Executive Director

VeRSI project management  Michael D’Silva – Program Manager and Software Systems Engineer

Chris Myers – Program Director

Brief summary of project  VBL Integration and Extension