Grace King, a rising Junior, majoring in Physics at Vassar College and studying Engineering at Dartmouth College, participated in the REU program at Cornell this summer, and her research project is quite timely, as CHESS and CESR are currently undergoing their biggest upgrade in decades.

However, the pervasive presence of granular materials masks how complicated it is to predict their mechanical response. Granular materials can behave as a solid foundation to a building, a flowing liquid down an incline, or as a gas when lifted into a storm. All these behaviors stem from how the contacts between grains evolve as load is applied.

CHESS is a circular particle accelerator that produces synchrotron radiation in the form of high-intensity, high-energy x-rays. These x-ray beams are instrumental for research in a wide variety of fields, including materials science, biology, and physics. The CHESS facility is connected with the Cornell Electron Storage Ring, which stores the beams of light accelerated by the synchrotron.

Ostwald ripening is a familiar effect – think of small water droplet condensing on a cold window pane. Sooner or later larger droplets form that will grow at the expanse of the smaller ones. Now imagine this random process proceeding in a highly organized way and with formation of symmetric patterns – such a behavior would seem rather unusual.

This type of repetitive use, or cyclic loading, leads to failure of everything from auto components to door hinges to plastic utensils. In the engineering world, understanding failure and predicting failure of parts and materials is important, yet a complete understanding of the processes which lead to failure remains incomplete. In addition to worrying about failure, engineers are also concerned with system efficiency. Many systems, such as automobile engines, run more efficiently at higher operating temperatures. Improving efficiency has enormous technical and economical relevance.

Yonath linked widespread use of antibiotics to increased human life expectancy. Her work on ribosomes has offered insight into helping researchers understand antibiotic resistance.

Yonath won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 for her work determining the structure of ribosomes using cryo-crystallography, which freezes cellular components so they can be viewed with X-rays. Yonath and her research team developed the technique in conjunction with the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), a powerful synchrotron X-ray facility.

Their technique was shown to measure down to 0.39 ångströms or 0.039 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter).

Guinness World Records has officially recognized the Cornell collaboration’s achievement, listing it alongside such notables as Robert Pershing Wadlow (at 8 feet, 11.1 inches, the world’s tallest human) and Lee Redmond (longest fingernails, with a combined length of 28 feet, 4 inches).