A particle passes through several stages of before it reaches the RHIC storage ring. The first stage for ions is the electron beam ion source (EBIS), while for protons, the linear accelerator (Linac) is used. As an example, gold nuclei leaving the EBIS have a kinetic energy of per nucleon and have an electric charge "Q" = +32 (32 of 79 electrons stripped from the gold atom). The particles are then accelerated by the Booster synchrotron to per nucleon, which injects the projectile now with "Q" = +77 into the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), before they finally reach per nucleon and are injected in a "Q" = +79 state (no electrons left) into the RHIC storage ring over the AGS-to-RHIC Transfer Line (AtR).