1. Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) recently constructed the National SynchrotronLight Source II (NSLS-II), which provides the world's brightest coherent x-rays for studying materials and biological systems. Beamline 17-ID-2, the Macromolecular Crystallography Beamline, utilizes x-rays in the energy range 5.0 - 30.0 keV. What range of frequencies and wavelengths does this correspond to?
2. The High-Resolution Powder Diffractometer, beamline BT-1 at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), utilizes neutrons with a wavelength of 2.079 Å. The mass of a neutron is 1.67×10-27 kg.
a. Calculate the frequency and velocity of the neutrons used in this experiment.
b. Calculate the energy of the neutrons used in this experiment.
c. X-ray techniques are very powerful and often have better resolution than neutron experiments. However, there are sometimes concerns that the high energies associatedwith x-ray experiments can cause damage to sensitive biological samples, and you willoften read arguments that neutron experiments are a "more gentle" means of probing thestructure of sensitive materials. Compare the energy you calculated in part (b) for theNIST neutron diffractometer with the energies in the x-ray crystallography beamline from problem 1. Is this argument reasonable?