2008

3 November 2008
Thursday 30th of October a teaching module on nuclear fusion for secondary school pupils was certified by the Dutch Ministry of Education. This assures that the module will now become part of a new subject on the Dutch curriculum, called "Nature, Life and Technology" (NLT). The module was developed by Erik Min (chief editor) and Amy Shumack from Rijnhuizen in close collaboration with secondary school physics teachers Lieke Heimel and Peter van Soest.

1 August 2008
Scientists from Germany, Canada and The Netherlands have studied tiny gold nanoparticles, so-called clusters, and found them to have fascinating arrangements of their constituent atoms. For example, twenty gold atoms form a tetrahedron, a sort of pyramid. The nineteen-atom cluster is a truncated pyramid, which can be formed by cutting off one corner atom from the twenty-atom gold pyramid. The structures have been identified using the Free Electron Laser for Infrared eXperiments FELIX at the FOM-Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen in Nieuwegein. Detailed knowledge about the geometries of such nanoparticles can lead to a better understanding of the unexpected catalytic activity of very small gold particles. The researchers published their results in Science on 1 August 2008.

19 June 2008
The report contains an overview of events of the last year, a discussion of the most important scientific results and a "visitors guide", i.e. a chapter that describes the scope of all scientific and supporting groups in the institute. Moreover, data on funding and scientific output are collected in the appendix.

18 June 2008
Rijnhuizen PhD Ivo Classen is awarded the 2008 EPS Plasma Physics Division PhD Research Award for his thesis entitled 'Imaging and Control of Magnetic Islands in Tokamaks'. The price was awarded during the annual European Physical Society (EPS) conference on Plasma Physics in Crete, Greece.