[Triumf-seminars] TRIUMF Colloquium today at 14:00

[TRIUMF Seminars]

Date/Time: Thu 2024-04-18 at 14:00

Location:  Auditorium / Hybrid 

Speaker:   Mike Wieser (U Calgary)

Title:     Tales told by the Atomic Weights: Unraveling the stories of the chemical elements

Abstract: We are most familiar with the atomic weight of a chemical element as the average atomic mass of the occurrence of this element. At first glance, this number may seem rather mundane, but the digits encode much deeper meaning. As early as 1919, T. W. Richards (a Nobel prize winner in chemistry) recognized that atomic weights "tell in a language of their own the story of the birth or evolution of all matter". We now know that atomic weights are not constants of Nature. Indeed, the variability in atomic weight for an element is the result of subtle, but significant, variations in the relative numbers of isotopes of that element. Changes in the distribution of the isotopes depends on the history of the atoms and these variations provide unique insights into physical, chemical, and biological processes involving the element. In this talk, I will describe how decoding the differences in the relative numbers of isotopes can provide unique insights into the mechanisms responsible for changing isotopic composition. We will explore some recent applications of isotope abundance data to detect the dysregulation of trace metals in living systems as the result of disease, to detect the accumulation of radioactive decay products in human tissues, and to place constraints on the probability of double beta decay to eventually understand neutrino properties. At the heart of the determination of isotopic composition is the mass spectrometer and significant developments over the past two decades are creating research opportunities in new areas. I will present our work at the University of Calgary over the past two decades and recent work at TRIUMF to enable high sensitivity and high-resolution isotope abundance measurements on TITAN.          
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https://uvic.zoom.us/j/81903315109?pwd=T0RTOEJCUVppMnFWQzRkNzV1UUs3UT09          

Meeting ID: 819 0331 5109          
Password: 183359          
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Bring your own mug!

Students and postdocs are invited to meet with the speaker following the seminar.

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General TRIUMF seminar information available at http://www.triumf.ca/home/upcoming-events/about-seminars-lectures