Use this space to let us know about recent events or announcements you might have.
Volleyball Challenge 2010
(Photos provided by Paul Wiita)
Slide show of alumni talks (spring 2009)
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Slide show of faculty/student events in 2008-09 academic year
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Fall 2009 Student-Faculty Volleyball game (s)
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Spring 2010 Student-Faculty Dinner
Spring 2010 Student Presentations & Picnic
R. Ochoa's Tcnjphysics Blog 
Condensed Matter video projects: Spring 2015
Tim & Lucas:
Cody & Nic:
Lance:
Christian & David W:
David P:
David C. & Tyler:
Students in Condensed Matter will give Power Point presentations on the topics below. Feel free to attend the talks (dates in parenthesis, talks start at 2:00 p.m.).
Lucas B. – Piezoelectricity (3/12/15)
Joe A. – Micro Electromechanical Devices (MEMS) (3/12/15)
Nic F. – Solar Cells & Photovoltaics (3/12/15)
Maxwell P. – Fullerenes (3/12/15)
Josh G. – Ferromagnetism (3/23/15)
Eric B. – Photonic Crystals (3/23/15)
Jaylond M. – Superfluid Helium (3/23/15)
Lance C. – Transmission Electron Microscopy (3/23/15)
Timothy O. – Superconductivity (3/30/15)
David P. – Quantum Hall Effect (3/30/15)
Cody C. – Graphene (3/30/15)
Christian B. Giant Magnetoresistive Effect (3/30/15)
Ben C.. – Semiconductor Lasers & LEDs (4/2/15)
David C. – Quantum Dots (4/2/15)
Tyler V. – Scanning Tunneling Microscopes (4/2/15)
David W. – Condensed Matter at the Horizon of Black Holes (4/2/15)
Electromagnetic Waves and Optics 2013 Presentations:
(Monday and Thursday from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in P-309)
Monday session:
1. “Seeing the Road Ahead: Automobile Vision Sensors,” Mitchell Revalski & Nicholas Erickson
2. “Advances in Standoff Detection Make the World Safer,” Dawid Nowak & Michael McLoughlin.
3. “Invisibility Cloaking and Transformation Optics,” Victoria Calafut & Anginelle Alabanza.
4. “Laser Spark Plugs: Ignition by Laser Pulse,” Dan Nemes & Ron Tsung.
5. “Fiber Optics and Medical Applications,” Jeff Chiusano & John Friedfeld.
6. “Photons and Food Fraud: The Future of Optics in Food Safety,” Will Rhodes, Stacy Jean-Philippe and Sanaa Mansoor.
Thursday session:
1. “Theory and application of 3-D printing,” Marianna Caruso-Gilbert & Harrison Bilmers.
2. “Quantum Diamonds,” David Pauls, Rob Anderson, and Andrew Miller.
3. “New Angles on 3-D Display Technology,” William Dybus & Andrew Bruccoleri.
4. “Using fiber optics to analyze corrosion and damage to structures,” Zachary French & Bhavini Nayee.
In Condensed Matter several students have created YouTube videos to try to explain various condensed matter related phenomena. Please visit the site and rate the videos. Students need a minimum number of likes to pass!! 🙂
Jan, David, & Ron:
Mitchell:
John & Kelly:
Marianna & Andrew:
Students in Condensed Matter will give Power Point presentations on the topics below. Feel free to attend the talks (dates in parenthesis, talks start at 10:00 a.m.).
Andrew M. – Nanodiamonds (2/25/13)
Nicholas E. – Superconductivity (2/25/13)
Mitchell R. – Betavoltaics (2/28/13)
Joe B. – Photonic Crystals (2/28/13)
Kelly W. – Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (3/4/13)
Victoria C. – Quantum Hall Effect (3/4/13)
Jan B. – Solar Cells & Photovoltaics (3/7/13)
William E. – Ferromagnetics (3/7/13)
John F. – Graphene (3/25/13)
Marianna – Fullerenes (3/28/13)
Kenny R. – Micro Electromechanical Devices (MEMS) (3/28/13)
David S. – Scanning Tunneling Microscopes (4/1/13)
Edward N. – Cocrystals (4/1/13)
Dan N. – Semiconductor Lasers & LEDs (4/4/13)
Dawid N. – Quantum Dots (4/4/13)
Ron T. – Diamagnetism & Paramagnetism (4/11/13)
Zachary F. – Piezoelectricity
Dacoda Nelson e-mailed me the following on LaTex: Any suggestions e-mail him at:: dacodanelson@gmail.com
I’ve been working on a wiki-book online that I’m hoping can serve as a crash-course in getting up and running with LaTeX with no prior experience. At the moment it’s not complete but I’m hoping to get input from other people so I thought it might be something you could post on the physics blog.
Ideally I’d like to see input/edits from people who read through it so that it can get better. With some help I think it could be an excellent resource for TCNJ students who want to get started using the platform. The book is here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Brief_Introduction_to_the_LaTeX_Typesetting_Environment
You are all invited to talks by the outstanding Electromagnetic Waves & Optics students.The first session will be held on Thursday, October 27 at 2:00 p.m. in room P-310.
Speakers:
Anthony N. & Chris C. “Solar Concentrators”
Dacoda N. & Andrew B. “Medical lasers”
Jan B. “New Technology Produces Real-Time 3-D Holograms”
Adam C. & Eli R. “Geomapping”
Kayla S. & Megan D. “Bright & Flexible Fixtures”
The second session will be on Monday, October 31 at 2:00 p.m. in P-310
Speakers:
Rob S. & Julian S. “Innovations and Applications of Facial Recognition Technology”
Mina S. & Paolo D. “Optogenetics”
Paige G. & Brett C. “Optical data Storage”
Joe G. & Kelsey B. “Insect eyes”
Michael E. & Dan S. “3 Dim Holography Microscopy”
Celebration of Student Achievements will be held on Wednesday April 27, 2011 starting at noon. The talks session will be followed by a poster session (2:00 – 3:00 p.m.) which in turn will be followed by our annual picnic (Rosedale Park). All alum and majors are encouraged to attend.
The talks scheduled are as follows:
Schmitt, Christian “A radial velocity analysis of the close Binary Star System, TU Muscae, using IUE spectra,” Mentor: R. J. Pfeiffer
Vanadia, Sean “Optical tweezing of micro-objects using a blue laser,” Mentor: R. Ochoa
Di Lorenzo, Paolo “Gravitational wave memory – Part I,” Mentor: T. Wickramasinghe
Erickson, Michael “Gravitational wave memory – Part II.” T. Wickramasinghe
Silano, Dan “Modeling and Analysis of Binary Star Systems,” Mentor: R. J. Pfeiffer
Lin, Cindy “Using the Wiimote to study coupled springs systems,” Mentor: R. Ochoa
Rosales, Justin “Toward an Understanding of Variability Induced by Turbulent Jet Flow in Blazars,” Mentor: P. Wiita
Noonan, Anthony “Newly archived and analyzed: 120 years of solar measurement from Blue Hill Observatory, MA,” Mentor: N. Magee
The posters will be:
Grippaldi, Joe and Giorla, Page “Observations from TCNJ’s first ever radio telescope,” M. Kavic
Riviere, Yanique “The electrical activity of the heart,” Mentor: D. Dalafave
Jani, Krupa “Targeted inhibitors of Polo-like Kinase 1 (Plk1),” Mentor: D. Dalafave
Brunner, Kelsey “Crustal structure of the Atlantic Piedmont,” M. Benoit
Cardena, Brett “A coincident search for radio and gravitational waves from compact object mergers,” Mentor: M. Kavic
Sobczak, Rob “Origins of X-shaped radio galaxies,” Mentor: P. Wiita
Starr, Julian “Modeling and classifying X-shaped radio galaxies,” Mentor: P. Wiita
Bohler, Ryan “Dual beam trapping of yeast cells,” Mentor: R. Ochoa
The 2011 Sigma Pi Sigma induction was held on April 20, 2011. Dr. Ray J. Pfeiffer was the keynote speaker. Eleven majors were inducted. The new Sigma Pi Sigma inductees are:
Aliya M., Kyle G., Greg P., Ashley W., Rob S., Zohaib I., Michael B., Noelle G., Cindy L., Megan T., & Chris C.
On a related note, to be in the upper third of this year’s senior class (for the whole TCNJ) students had to have a 3.5 GPA.
So we like to post about all the successes of our alum and majors. Kyle G. has had an excellent year in track and field and has won several honors. Although Noelle promised a photo I found a link (yeah, kind of impatient after three weeks of waiting) that highlights his most recent achievement http://www.tcnjathletics.com/news/2011/4/11/WLAX_0411111015.aspx?path=mtrack
The relevant text from the above link is:
Senior Kyle Gilroy (Oak Ridge, NJ/West Milford Twp.) won the 110-meter hurdles, 400-meter hurdles, and also contributed to the 4×100 meter relay. For those marks he was named NJAC Male Track Athlete of the Week.
Please join me in congratulating Kyle.
Congratulations to Noelle Gotthardt and Kyle Gilroy on being accepted to graduate school. Noelle to Rutgers and Lehigh (and possibly more). She has been accepted into the Ph.D. programs in Mechanical Engineering. Kyle has been accepted to the Ph. D. Mechanical Engineering program at Temple University. Both majors have been offered fellowships and/or scholarships and research assistant positions.
Message from Dacoda & Brett
Brett and I have ported Force 3.0 to the Mac platform so that people with OS X can do their programming without a Windows machine. [If you could put that on the blog] our project is hosted at sourceforge.net/projects/osxforce There are a few minor bugs to be worked out but people can still use it to program and compile, it’s just kind of ugly.
Students in Condensed Matter will give Power Point presentations on the topics below. Feel free to attend the talks (dates in parenthesis, talks start at 10:00 a.m.).
Zohaib I. – Scanning Electron Microscopy (2/14/11)
Michael N. – Co-crystals (2/21/11)
Matthew K. (Chem)- X-ray Diffraction Methods (2/21/11)
Paige G. – Photovoltaics & Solar Cells (2/24/11)
Julian S. – Atomic Force Microscopy (2/24/11)
Anthony J. – Ferromagnetism (2/28/11)
Christopher C. – Diamagnetism & Paramagnetism (2/28/11)
Michael E. – Quantum Hall Effect (3/3/11)
Brett C. – Quantum Dots (3/3/11)
[….Spring Break….]
Daniel S. – Superconductors (3/21/11)
Joe G. – Photonic Crystals (3/21/11)
Paolo D. – Transmission Electron Microscopy (3/24/11)
Noelle G. – Nanodiamonds (3/24/11)
John L. – Graphene (3/28/11)
Dacoda N. – Piezoelectricity (3/28/11)
Anthony J. N. – Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (3/31/11)
Rob S. – Micro Electromechanical Devices (3/31/11)
Matt K. (Phys) – Giant Magnetoresistive Effect (4/4/11)
Andrew B. – Semiconductor Lasers and LEDs (4/15/11)
Slide show of the 2010 Volleyball game Seniors and Faculty against the world is posted at the top of this page. Due to problems with Rockyou.com I’m using a different slide show program. Slide shows that have ‘disappeared’ will be reposted soon.
So if you remember at graduation when Gleeson had me make my own speech about what I had planned for the future, I said I had an interview at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Hospital in NY. Well the interview went well and now I am working in the Human Genetics department doing research 😛
Oh and by the way Pfeiffer, I actually used Fortran to write a program for a project I am working on. So thanks for drilling it into my head!
Congratulations Justin! Maybe you can expand a bit more in the MD/PhD/Biomedical page or the alumni page your responsibilities(thanks). I am sure Dr. Pfeiffer will use your sentence for eons to come. 🙂
For those that were not present at the May 2010 graduation ceremony, Justin was asked to describe his future plans and he mentioned the interview. For those of us who know Justin’s abilities, his success comes as no surprise.
Interesting data on what physics bachelor’s do a year after graduating can be found in the following link:
Click to access bach2010.pdf
About 26% of majors from undergraduate institutions continue to physics & astronomy grad school, 25% to other fields grad school, and the rest seek employment.
The picnic was held on April 28 at Rosedale park. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors attended as well as three alum. Competitive volleyball and soccer matches were held. The following awards were given:
Volleyball:
MVP Female: Noelle (and not only because she was the only girl playing)
MVP alum: Rich S. (he out hustled all others even though he’s 40% older (on average) than our majors)
MVP faculty RO (OK, so only faculty playing but, on average, an order of magnitude older than most majors)
MVP Male: who knows?
Soccer:
MVP overall: Noelle (crushed all competitors, male and female…no mercy)
MVT (most violent tackle) Rob S. on RO (brutal slide tackle followed by a whacking with no mercy)
MSL (most sore loser) Zohaib ([lost the volleyball match and during the losing effort of his team, seconded Corey on the infamous golden goal effort] (followed closely by Corey who invented the golden goal so he could claim victory,,,otherwise he would not give others a ride)
PoP (physicists of the picnic): Megan, Stephanie, and Paige (demonstrated in phase oscillations on the swing sets and attempted coupled harmonic swinging)
MNA (most notably absent): FRESHMEN
Thanks to Aliya for providing the photos.
All in all a good time. Great organization by, and many thanks, to Cindy, Corey, and all others involved (it will be up to them to blog in the Clubs’ page and tells us who also helped).
Today, April 28, 2010 Corey T. , soon to be a TCNJ Physics alum donated a brand new Nintendo Wii console to the Physics Club (Society of Physics Students local chapter is a fancier name). The Wii. to be known as the Corey Tong Wii (in gold crayola letters until we get funds for better material) will be used for research in stress management by physics majors. Yours truly will be testing the console and games until suitable test majors are found.
In fact, we should be holding some sessions during exam week. Please e-mail or see me or Cindy to arrange for the therapy sessions. As of now Wii Sports and Wii Fit are available. I’ll bring other gam… relaxation experiences that use the gyroscopes (Wii plus).
A condition of the gift is that we must get Miis for every major and faculty member of the department…sounds like a theme for a competition.
Please join me in thanking Corey for his nice gesture.
Hey everyone,
I wanted to blog about my recent conference experience. I was able to attend the 5th Iberian Cosmology conference about a week ago in Porto, Portugal. Everything about this was a great experience-not only was traveling to Portugal fun, but the conference itself was really a good experience. I got to meet a ton of new people, and since it was a pretty small conference (maybe about 50 or so people-here’s the conference photo: http://www.astro.up.pt/investigacao/conferencias/ibericos2010/ibericos2010.jpg ) we had a chance to really talk to most everyone. Another good thing was that a lot of the people in attendance were PhD students, so I got to ask a lot of questions about their programs and stuff like that.
The conference was only for talks, so it was just everyone presenting for about 15-20 minutes on their research. Even though some of the topic were over my head, I felt like there were a good amount of talks that I could follow and somewhat understand, and even if I didn’t it was easy to talk to the presenter afterwards and ask questions. I also got to present my work that I’d done with Dr. Wick, which was a very nerve racking but overall good experience. Even though I was nervous about it, I think it went fairly well and was well received.
So, overall, Portugal was beautiful and I love the country and the conference went very well!
RoboRace V and SumoBOt III will be held on April 29, 2010. The competitions will take place in SC-P309 at 1:00 p.m. All majors, faculty members, and alum (looking for another reason to visit us) are welcome.
To increase the sense of competition and creativity the following links show the results of previous competitions. In summary, 4 winners in RoboRace and 2 in SumoBot….and a bunch of loo….non-winners. (Note: the first RoboRace was held in shorter courses)
Click to access RoboRace%20I%20Times.pdf
Click to access RoboRace%20II%20Times.pdf
Click to access RoboRace%20III-SumoBot%20I.pdf
Click to access RoboRace%20IV-SumoBot%20II.pdf
The names for RoboRace V & SumoBot III teams can be found at:
Click to access RoboRace%20V-SumoBot%20III.pdf
The file will be updated digitally as more data comes in. A group of judges (Corey, Darrick, and other volunteers whose names will remain anonymous to protect them) will decide on the “best” Rob- and Sumo bot names.
File has been updated. Teams have been separated into groups of three for the races. The Sumo Bot schedule is up.
The judges are hard at work designing the new track and deciding on the best names.
The student-faculty dinner was held on March 24, 2010 at Leonardo’s II. The event was extremely successful with about 30 students attending. Many thanks to Cindy Lin and her Physics Club executive committee (and members) for such a wonderful organization and great participation. Photos are forthcoming (depends on when Katia sends them…:)
Slide show for the student faculty dinner has now been posted. Many thanks to Katia for the photos…she forgot to include a photo with her in it 😦
Something for physics majors to brag about., the following link reports the average MCAT and LSAT scores of physics bachelors as compared to other majors. Physics majors score an average of 31 in the MCATs (though rumor is that TCNJ physics majors have scored higher than that) while bio and premed score, on average 27. Physics majors receive higher LSAT scores than other majors!
Click to access mcat2009.pdf
Registration starts in a few weeks. 300 level courses or higher (most offered every other year) to be offered in the Fall ’10 are: Modern Physics, Math Physics, Classical Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics, and General Relativity & Cosmology. In the Spring of ’11 Astrophysics and Condensed Matter will be offered.
It was suggested that I post something about my recent award of the Thomas J. Bardos Undergraduate Education Award, sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research. The applicant pool consists of ~500 undergraduates from around the world who have previously conducted or expressed interest in conducting cancer research. Ten or so people are selected each year. Judging from the past record of awardees, none/very few are from the latter category. According to their records, I will be the first person from TCNJ to be awarded this award.
This gives me…free attendance to AACR annual meetings for two years (student registration is $60), in addition to a $1,500 stipend for two years, which can be used to cover travel expenses and research materials. In addition, I get to do things like mentor groups of high school students interested in research.
Cheers,
Kevin
I’m so proud of the current electronic class that I had to post…for the first time in recorded history no fuses were blown or ammeters destroyed during the first electronics lab!!! 🙂 Currently 38 majors divided into 18 groups (3 lab sessions) have allowed all DMMs to survive unscathed… I had 100 fuses ready to be used…and nothing… in the past dozens were destroyed…but not by any alum reading this post, of course 🙂
In other news, tomorrow, Wednesday, January 27 the (delayed) Fall 09 Independent Research presentations will be held from 10:30 a.m – 12:30 p.m. followed by a potluck lunch…another first…organized by the physics club.
RO
I read this post by Dr. O and just had to laugh. Andrew B and I must have blown 4 fuse ON THE SAME STEP in that first lab! We just couldn’t grasp the breadboard. Kudos to the electronics class (even though this comes several months after the feat).
More good news from Team DPX III. Their proposal has been awarded a Sigma Pi Sigma Undergraduate Research. In their e-mail the honor society indicates:
“… Undergraduate Research proposal has been selected by the SPS Awards Committee I as a 2009-2010 winner. The awards committee was extremely impressed with your proposal for its research potential and for its usefulness in bringing the chapter together.”
The proposal was submitted by Aliya and Darrick on behalf of our local chapter (adviser: R.Ochoa). This is the second year in a row that Team DPX has won this competitive award. It includes $2000 to cover some of their expenses. Congratulations Team DPX III.
Now Corey joins the list of Phi Kappa Phi Student Faculty Research award recipients (advisor: Dr. Magee) . He’ll follow up with more details on his winning proposal.
Aliya continues on a roll! She has been awarded a Phi Kappa Phi Student-Faculty Research award for her project on dusty plasma (advisor : R. Ochoa). She continues the long tradition of physics majors obtaining this award. Actually it was started by Justin two semesters ago, followed by Kyle, and now Aliya. Eventually it will be a long tradition…
But there’s more, Aliya was also awarded a NJ Space Grant (details to be provided by her). This is a first for physics majors.
To read more about Team DPX, its origins, videos, and links please go to the page listed on the left frame.
Team DPX III has been accepted to participate in NASA’s 2010 Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program (Microgravity University). Their flight (on the ‘Vomit Comet’) week is scheduled for June 17-26, 2010. Team leader Aliya and Darrick should add more info soon. This is the third year in a row that TCNJ physics students (and two for the engineering majors) will conduct research on dusty plasma in NASA’s program.
Congratulations to Team DPX III!
Recently published: “Prediction of functional engrailed homology-1 protein motif from sequence”, D.S. Dalafave, Bioinformation, 4(6): 229-232 (2009).
Dr. Paul Wiita, will visit campus on Friday, December 4. At 2:00 p.m. he will give a talk “Quasars, Radio Galaxies and Blazars: Fast Fluctuations and Furious Flows” in SC-P101. All are invited to attend.
Dr. Amer Lahamer, will visit campus on Wednesday, December 2. At 2:00 p.m. he will give a talk “Teaching and Research in an Undergraduate Institution” in SC-P101. All are invited to attend.
Dr. Philip Rubin, will visit campus on Friday, November 20. At 2:00 p.m. he will give a talk “Complicated Searches for Simplicity: An Introduction to Experimental Particle Physics” in SC-P101. All are invited to attend.
Registration starts in a couple of weeks. The following upper level physics courses are being offered:
Analog and Digital Electronics (required for all tracks)
Biomedical Physics (required for PHYH, it also satisfies the intermediate writing intensive requirement)
Electromagnetism II (required for PHYA track)
Experimental & Analytical Physics (Capstone course, required for PHYA track)
[Maybe Stellar Astronomy will be offered]
Pictures of the annual Freshmen against the world volleyball game have been added on the third slide show from the top of this page. The event took place on Wednesday, September 9, 2009.
Hi all!! I wanted to share the news that my first first-author paper was just accepted into The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ)!! The title is:
“Benefits of Ground-Based Photometric Follow-Up for Transiting Extrasolar Planets Discovered with Kepler and CoRoT”
You can take a look at the pre-print at http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.5193
Another paper was recently submitted to ApJ, on which I am a co-author (to be more specific, I am eighth author, haha). For that paper, we (myself, my adviser, and another staff member at the University of Florida) conducted observations at a small telescope near UF so as to provide essential data of the transit of HD 80606 (the transiting planet with the longest orbital period discovered to date). You can check out the submitted paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.5205
That said, there are very exciting things going on in the exoplanet business at UF 🙂
Well, I haven’t posted in a bit, but some good news came up.
I am one of 5 incoming grad students in the physics department at Rutgers to receive a Department of Education fellowship under the Graduate Assistantships in Areas of National Need (GAANN) program. The program director chose me maybe because of my tutor experience or my lack of money; I prefer to think it’s the former. This fellowship will pay possibly a bit over $30,000 for the year with no extra work on my part, aside from one supervised year of teaching. This is quite a nice increase from my original TA salary of $24,500.
Enjoy the second half of summer!
Both Yawar and Claudio have to realize that until it’s blogged, preferable by them, their news are not official. They should not be too humble (or is it too cocky) to blog their achievements. We are all very proud of all our alum achievements and congratulate them.
Dr. O.
On the same note as above, another humble guy, Claudio Colaiacomo has been recently promoted to Regional Sales Manager for Southern Europe – Elsevier Science.
Yawar ‘Spaz’ (i.e. the humble one thus he cannot post directly) Qadri has let me know he has published as first author in the prestigious Journal of Biological Chemistry. His coauthor is the Chair of the Physiology and Biophysics Department at the University of Alabama – Birmingham. I am assuming the paper is: Psalmotoxin-1 Docking to Human Acid-sensing Ion Channel-1 Qadri et al. J. Biol. Chem..2009; 284: 17625-17633.
The following link takes you not to the paper (you have to pay for that) but to a cool interview where you can watch ‘almost’ Dr Dr Qadri
http://main.uab.edu/Sites/MediaRelations/articles/64670/
I wasn’t sure which section to put this under, but hopefully people will see this. I am from the Class of ’07, and currently in graduate school in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Florida. I wanted to spread the news that I have received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which provides funding for three years. The funding includes a healthy stipend and the cost of tuition and fees. You also get a one-time international travel grant, and access to some supercomputer time. This is an excellent fellowship, not just for the perks but for the prestige that comes with being named an NSF Fellow. I urge everyone that is either a current senior or a first or second year graduate student to apply! And please feel free to contact me (knicole@astro.ufl.edu) if you have any questions about the application process, and especially if you would like to see my essays, rating sheets, etc. for reference. This was my second time applying, so I have my “non-winning” essays and rating sheets as well. Good luck and take care!
Kyle Gilroy (class of ’11) became the second physics major, in as many semesters, to receive a Phi Kappa Phi award to conduct research using optical tweezers on eukaryotic cells. He will conduct his research next fall with Dr. O. as his research mentor.
Today, May 15, 2009 seventeen majors graduated from our department. In addition one had already graduated last December. This graduating class is the largest we’ve ever had. The graduates are: Ed Antrobus, Megan Bones, Brianna Carroll, Shawn de los Angeles, Frank Jones, Tim Magee, Sarah Mensa-Kwao, Scott Nagele, Justin Nieusma, Irene Ning, Chaz Ruggieri, Rachel Sherman, Erica Smith, Will Somers, Katia Tymofyeyeva,David Uhrich, and Chris Westenberger.
Tim Magee won the Fink-Moses-Pregger award for the graduating senior with the highest GPA in physics courses only.
Photos can be found in the Graduating Thoughts Class of ’09 section.
The presentation of independent research projects will be on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 12:30 p.m. in the Social Sciences Building room 225. Nine presentations will be given as part of the college wide Celebration of Student Achievements. The event is expected to last until 2:30 p.m.
The presentations will be followed by the annual departmental picnic to be held at the Valley Road park.
On Wednesday, April 22, 2009 six physics majors were inducted into Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Physics Honor Society. Seniors Tim Magee (PHYA), Justin Nieusma (PHYA), Chaz Ruggieri (PHYA), and David Uhrich (PHYT) were inducted as were juniors Darrick Jones (PHYA) and Corey Tong (PHYH). Dr. Magee was the guest speaker and gave an excellent talk missed by most of the physics majors but enjoined by the bunch of engineering majors that had learned about the event. Dr. Pfeiffer provided an unusual (and some found hilarious) induction ceremony. Photos of the event can be found added to the student-faculty dinner slide show.
On Monday, April 20, 2009 Shari K. (PHYG) raced her Parallax roboracer “Little Idiot” to victory against “Mach 10” and “Bob the NASCAR Racer”. Names of the sore losers held anonymous although one is a PHYA senior (TM) and the other a PHYH sophomore (KG). The winning time was 41.2 s for a racetrack over 9000 mm long(!) that included three obstacles. The losing racers were last seen begging for a rematch…even after choking on the fumes (wait… its an electric servo…) left by Little Idiot. Photos added to the Student – faculty dinner slide show above.
The Student – faculty dinner was held April 16, 2009 at Leonardo’s II. The event was wonderfully organized by Physics club VP, and President elect, Christina Roros. Eighteen majors, and twelve faculty/staff/family members plus a toddler participated. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the reunion. (Some photos have been added below the first slide show at top of this page.)
In case others don’t understand it, this is the link to Chris’ abstract in his recent string theory publication. It takes a while to download (at least it took me a while). Many congrats to Chris W. (a.k.a. Westy). It is always exciting to see your name or that of someone you know in print!
Check it out!!!
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRVDAQ000079000006066014000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
Neil gave his talk “Physics, Music, and Perception.” today in a well attended event. He gave numerous sound demonstrations, introduced concepts, Fourier transforms… I am sure our majors are very anxious awaiting to be tested on the topic!!!
Photos have been added to the slide show at the top of this page.
Scott Nagele has been added to the list of physics majors that are to be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa on April 6. Scott is the first PHYT major to be invited to join this honor society. He will join Tim, Justin, and Chaz in this years induction.
On March 25th, at 1:00 p.m. in room SC-P317 Dr. Neil Aaronson (class of ’02) will give a talk titled “Physics, Music, and Perception.” Here’s a brief abstract:
The field of psychoacoustics deals with the physics of auditory processing, particularly that of the human auditory system. This talk will follow the evolution of sound from its underpinnings in physics to the nature of sound in music. The physics of the human auditory system will be explored to see how mechanical vibrations in air eventually become neural impulses. The nature of auditory processing will be presented through examples, demonstrations, auditory illusions.
Neil is currently a professor at R. Stockton College. He also has experience, as applicant and reviewer, with graduate school applications and could advice majors on the process.
All are invited.
As of yesterday the paper I posted on here a while ago (http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.5105) was officially accepted to be published in the Physical Review D.
Today Erica Caden gave her talk “Neutrino Studies with Double Chooz at Drexel University” today. The talk was well attended by our majors. Photos at top of this page. (For some reason wordpress does not allow comments to have slide shows embedded, only pages)
Erica Caden (Class of ’05) will give a talk on Wednesday, March 4 at 1:00 p.m. in room SC-P317. Her title and abstract are:
“Neutrino Studies with Double Chooz at Drexel University”
Neutrinos are one of the least understood fundamental particles. The Double Chooz experiment is designed to measure a final parameter that will help us understand the nature of neutrinos. I will be discussing the discovery of neutrinos, why we need to understand them better, what parameter Double Chooz is looking for, and how it will help us understand these elusive “ghost particles.” I will also be discussing what specific work I have contributed to the Double Chooz collaboration in my four years as a graduate student at Drexel University.
All are invited.
Tim Magee, Justin Nieusma, and Chaz Ruggieri have been invited to join the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. They’ll join Andrew Grant, Mike Richman, Brandon Bentzley, and Matt Torres as physics students/alum that have been inducted into this prestigious honor society.
Hello,
Recently I completed a paper on the AdS/QCD correspondence with Dr. Josh Erlich in the High Energy Theory Group at The College of William and Mary. Some of this research was done during an REU over the summer of 2008, and was just recently completed. The paper can be found at :
http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.5105
~Westy
Team DPX’s II proposal has been accepted by the NASA’s Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program for the 2009 flight season. Team members are: Justin Nieusma (’09), Darrick Jones (’10), Aliya Merali (’11), Chaz Ruggieri (’09), and Rachel Sherman (’09) (all from physics), and Chris Conniff and Russell Jones from engineering. Drs. Sepahpour (from Mechanical Engineering) and Ochoa are the advisers.
Well, I guess I’ll keep using my monopoly on here to add some more news:
I was just selected as one of the students from the honors program to represent TCNJ at the Northeast Regional Honors Conference in Annapolis, Maryland in March. I will also be representing Team DPX there, as I will be speaking about the work we have been doing with Dusty Plasmas at this conference. This is exciting as this is again a very big cross-discipline conference at which the sciences, and especially physics, normally play a fairly small role. Information on this conference can be found at http://www.nrhchonors.org/
Oh, the name of the project is “Using Fluorescent Dust to Obtain a Three-Dimensional Analysis of a Dusty Plasma Part II.”
Just today, Team DPX won the Student-Faculty Research Award from The College of New Jersey’s chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the national honor society. Our proposal concerning the work that we have done already and our work for the next semester was one of fourteen submitted, a reported record number with strong competition. This is normally a cross-discipline award, as groups from any major can apply, and this is the first time (to Dr. Ochoa’s knowledge at least) that a physics group has won this award. As part of winning this, we will be given some monetary support for the project, and will be giving a special presentation of our work at the end of the semester.
2008 is the year we started the yearly Alumni Panel. Our first group, Maggie Benoit, Scott Hayward, Doug Jenkins, Paul McCracken, and Dave Pustai came in the spring of ’08. The second meeting held in the fall had Brandon Bentzley, Erica Caden, Alison Cooper, and Chris Voinier as panelists. The plan is to hold these events the fall of every year to. If any alum is interested in participating please let me know.
Paul McCracken came back in the fall to give a talk on his research. We’re also interested in having a couple of alumni give talks every semester. Volunteer to do so by e-mailing me or blogging.
In January of ’08 Justin Nieusma (’09) presented a poster at an Astrophysics meeting in Manchester, England. That same month Mike Hvasta (’08) presented at the AAPT in Baltimore. Alex Lopez (’10) presented at the Geophysics meeting in San Fransisco.
Also big news was Team DPX’s flight on the NASA Microgravity plane (see their page) in the summer of ’08.
RJP has posted a timely article titled: “Wait one second.” It explains the need for setting back, by one second, all clocks when the New Year arrives. You can view it using the following link:
Click to access Time.pdf