Skip to main content
Ingenium Logo

You are leaving IngeniumCanada.org

✖


This link leads to an external website that Ingenium does not control. Please read the third-party’s privacy policies before entering personal information or conducting a transaction on their site.

Have questions? Review our Privacy Statement

Vous quittez IngeniumCanada.org

✖


Ce lien mène à un site Web externe qu'Ingenium ne contrôle pas. Veuillez lire les politiques de confidentialité des tiers avant de partager des renseignements personnels ou d'effectuer une transaction sur leur site.

Questions? Consultez notre Énoncé de confidentialité

Ingenium The Channel

Langue

  • Français
Search Toggle

Menu des liens rapides

  • Ingenium Locations
  • Shop
  • Donate
  • Join
Menu

Main Navigation

  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners

Keys to the sun

This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.

Share
Feb 27, 2016
Categories
Sciences
Media
Article
Profile picture for user Algonquin College
By: Algonquin college
Arthur McDonald in 2015. Author: Bengt Nyman.
Arthur McDonald in 2015. Author: Bengt Nyman.

Daniel Prinn

Algonquin College Journalism Program

Neutrinos are tiny particles produced through the decay of radioactive elements. They also hold a key to understanding the sun. Arthur McDonald was the one to recognize this. In 1989, he headed a team at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. The Observatory was a large neutrino detector built two kilometres beneath earth’s surface in a mine in in Sudbury, Ontario.

McDonald’s team was able to show that neutrinos have mass. They also helped prove that neutrinos change from one type to another – between electron-type, muon-type and tau-type –when they travel from the sun to the earth. This was a huge discovery because it helped debunk the idea that neutrinos were massless. McDonald described it as the “eureka moment” of the discovery. His findings changed the laws of physics and scientists were able to learn more about the structure of the universe.

McDonald had been interested by the workings of the universe since an early age, which led him to physics. He earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Dalhousie University and then got his PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology, graduating in 1969. In 1982, McDonald became a professor at Princeton University, New Jersey. Seven years later, he became a professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Ontario.

McDonald was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2015, he was recognized for his discovery by co-winning the Nobel Prize for physics.

Transcript

Nobel Prize winner (and Cape Bretoner) Arthur B. McDonald explains his research into neutrino oscillations using patience and some sugary props.

Arthur McDonald won the Nobel Prize in physics. Source: Queen’s University.

Nobel laureates press conference. Source: Queen’s University.

Tags
Innovation Storybook
Author(s)
Profile picture for user Algonquin College
Algonquin college
Follow

Algonquin’s organizational philosophy is defined by its mission, vision and core values. The following are intended to serve as points of inspiration, carefully articulating our purpose

Mission: To transform hopes and dreams into lifelong success.

Vision: To be a global leader in personalized, digitally connected, experiential learning.

Our values: Caring, Integrity, Learning, Respect

https://www.algonquincollege.com/

More Stories by

Profile picture for user Algonquin College
Algonquin college
E.W.R. (Ned) Steacie.

Chemist’s war-time research leads to discovery

Related Stories

Black and white horizontal photograph of man wearing glasses who is laying on his side on the ground feeding a small squirrel by hand.

Reading Expedition Photographs in the Frank T. Davies Fonds

A red plastic telephone with the handset off of the base on a light grey table. There are scratches on the phone which is an angular design. The rotary dial is on the handset and attached to the base by a red spiral cord.

A Phone Call from Below the Arctic Ice - The 50th Anniversary of Arctic III Sub-Igloo Phone Call to Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Spliced image, from left to right: a seismometer on mars, a heap of red rhubarb stalks with green leaves, a copper roof of the Canaian Parliament

3 Things you should know about marsquakes, the value of urine, and the chemistry of rhubarb

A dirty glass slide of a stromatolite with a dirty cotton swab at the bottom; a close-up on a bee with a green head and thorax on a yellow flower; a false colour 3D view of the surface of Venus showing volcanoes and lava flowing towards the foreground.

3 Things you should know about how native bees are important pollinators, how saliva is used to clean artifacts, and active volcanism on Venus

A spliced photo, from left to right: Shaun the Sheep in front of a model of ESA’s European Service Module, a top view into a red bucket containing thousands of light-brown, rod-shaped pellets, and a toddler wearing a wool hat and wool sweater holds a grownup’s finger.

3 things you should know about why wool keeps us warm, and about its surprising uses in the garden and in space.

A large impact crater viewed from the rim, a woodern spoon full of small yellow grains, a close up of a forearm being tattooed.

3 things you should know about the untapped potential of millet, the permanence of tattoos, and asteroid airbursts

Three images side by side: a toilet bowl expelling a cloud of droplets, a gloved hand holding a test tube containing a small plant, and an infrared view of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io showing spots of volcanic activity covering the moon.

3 things you should know about flushing the toilet, artificial photosynthesis, and volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon

Headshots of 33 women, showing the diversity of women in AI and Robotics

Women in AI & Robotics: An interview with Founder and CEO, Sheila Beladinejad

A rear view of a person wearing a yellow coat and backpack in winter, a close-up view of bright red poinsettias with small yellow central flowers.

Two things you should know about the science of wind chill, and the Orion spacecraft's selfies.

A woman examining a bottle of olive oil in a grocery store, Gravel terrain in beige with boulders identified in pink, craters in purple, and crater rims in turquoise, A close up of the tread of a winter tire showing deep, wide, jagged grooves and wavy sipes.

3 things you should know about food fraud, how winter tires work and Canadian artificial intelligence headed for the Moon.

Three images side by side: A little girl smells a sunflower, the DART spacecraft’s impact into the asteroid Dimorphos, and a candy apple

3 things you should know about how the DART spacecraft changed the orbit of an asteroid, how we have more than five senses, and how the science of caramel can make you a better cook!

Designed image showing stars representing children who never made it home from residential schools, an eagle representing First Nations, a narwhal representing Inuit, a beaded flower representing Métis peoples, a winding white pathway representing the Road to Reconciliation, and a circle representing being together in a spirit of reconciliation.

Canada’s Federal Interdepartmental Indigenous STEM Cluster – A Force for Cooperation, Empowerment, and Reconciliation

Footer

About The Channel

The Channel

Contact Us

Ingenium
P.O. Box 9724, Station T
Ottawa ON K1G 5A3
Canada

613-991-3044
1-866-442-4416
contact@IngeniumCanada.org
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Channel

    • Channel Home
    • About the Channel
    • Content Partners
  • Visit

    • Online Resources for Science at Home
    • Canada Agriculture and Food Museum
    • Canada Aviation and Space Museum
    • Canada Science and Technology Museum
    • Ingenium Centre
  • Ingenium

    • Ingenium Home
    • About Ingenium
    • The Foundation
  • For Media

    • Newsroom
    • Awards

Connect with us

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest Ingenium news straight to your inbox!

Sign Up

Legal Bits

Ingenium Privacy Statement

© 2023 Ingenium

Symbol of the Government of Canada
  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners