Stargaze Friday Night/Picnic Saturday
A busy weekend is coming up for the P&A department. On Friday night, April 17, the JMU Department of Physics & Astronomy will be hosting a star gaze (8:30-10:00pm) at the JMU astronomy park to welcome Saturn back to the evening skies, which is currently in the constellation Leo whose rings are nearly edge-on. This phenomenon only happens every 15 years. We'll have two 10-inch telescopes set up as well as several pairs of binoculars available. We encourage students, staff, as well as the general public to attend. Feel free to bring your own binoculars, or even small telescopes. The weather for Friday night should be clear. Admission is free.
On Saturday, the Society of Physics Students (SPS) will be hosting the spring department picnic at shelter #9 of Hillandale Park in Harrisonburg from 10:30 am to 3:00 pm. If you need a ride, you can meet in front of the Physics/Chemistry Building at about 10:20 am and catch one there.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Jamey Szalay wins Goldwater Scholarship!
Our congratulations to Jamey for this outstanding accomplishment.
Details are found here.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Tales from the March Meeting
Every year, one of the largest gatherings of physicists in the world is the March Meeting of the American Physical Society. Each year, thousands of physicists who specialize in condensed matter, solid state, materials, and related subdisciplines meet for a week in the middle of March to share what they've discovered. This year's meeting was in Pittsburgh, PA from 3/16-3/20 and was attended by JMU faculty members Chris Hughes, Scott Paulson, and Brian Utter, future faculty member Giovanna Scarel, and senior physics major Bruno Caputo.
Scott started out the week on Monday with a talk on the nanotube research he had been doing with physics majors Lok-Kun Tsui and Joe Hardcastle. On Wednesday, Bruno gave a talk on his research work on the adhesion of metal films to polymer surfaces. This is work he has been doingin the Augustine/Hughes lab with chemistry major Alan Mo and physics majors Jon Wyrick (now in grad school at UC-Irvine) and Ethan Rosenthal. Later on Wednesday afternoon, Chris gave a talk in a session about Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) programs on the impact of participation in our chemistry REU and materials REU program on student performance in the classroom. On Thursday morning, Giovanna gave a presentation of some of the research she has been doing at NCSU, some of which will be part of the lab she sets up here this fall. Finally, on Thursday, Brian talked about his work on jamming in granular systems. Brian's talk has the additional honor of being an "invited" talk, a distinction that shows that the organizers of that session identified him as one of the more prominent researchers in that field and asked him to come to the meeting to present it.
Bruno's talk is exceptional in another way. While it is not unheard of, it is not typical for undergraduates to have the opportunity to present at the March Meeting. The vast majority of talks are given by professors, post-docs, industrial and governmental staff scientists, and grad students. Bruno was kind enough to give us some of his thought on the experience:
"Undergraduate research at James Madison University is what makes the primary undergraduate institution (PUI) concept such a beneficial experience. The research we get to take part in is on the forefront of science worldwide; the kinds of stuff graduate students get to work on. Not undergrads. Well, here at James Madison University, I am able to work side by side with my advisor, Dr. Chris Hughes. I am able to experiment with my own ideas and develop my own methods for solving problems. Being dedicated to my work, I was able to gather up enough results to present my work in front of a small crowd at the Virginia Academy of Science meeting at Hampton University in May 2008. This experience was a rush to say the least. I got to show all that I have learned and was quizzed at the end with questions to really prove myself.
Every year, one of the largest gatherings of physicists in the world is the March Meeting of the American Physical Society. Each year, thousands of physicists who specialize in condensed matter, solid state, materials, and related subdisciplines meet for a week in the middle of March to share what they've discovered. This year's meeting was in Pittsburgh, PA from 3/16-3/20 and was attended by JMU faculty members Chris Hughes, Scott Paulson, and Brian Utter, future faculty member Giovanna Scarel, and senior physics major Bruno Caputo.
Scott started out the week on Monday with a talk on the nanotube research he had been doing with physics majors Lok-Kun Tsui and Joe Hardcastle. On Wednesday, Bruno gave a talk on his research work on the adhesion of metal films to polymer surfaces. This is work he has been doingin the Augustine/Hughes lab with chemistry major Alan Mo and physics majors Jon Wyrick (now in grad school at UC-Irvine) and Ethan Rosenthal. Later on Wednesday afternoon, Chris gave a talk in a session about Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) programs on the impact of participation in our chemistry REU and materials REU program on student performance in the classroom. On Thursday morning, Giovanna gave a presentation of some of the research she has been doing at NCSU, some of which will be part of the lab she sets up here this fall. Finally, on Thursday, Brian talked about his work on jamming in granular systems. Brian's talk has the additional honor of being an "invited" talk, a distinction that shows that the organizers of that session identified him as one of the more prominent researchers in that field and asked him to come to the meeting to present it.
Bruno's talk is exceptional in another way. While it is not unheard of, it is not typical for undergraduates to have the opportunity to present at the March Meeting. The vast majority of talks are given by professors, post-docs, industrial and governmental staff scientists, and grad students. Bruno was kind enough to give us some of his thought on the experience:
"Undergraduate research at James Madison University is what makes the primary undergraduate institution (PUI) concept such a beneficial experience. The research we get to take part in is on the forefront of science worldwide; the kinds of stuff graduate students get to work on. Not undergrads. Well, here at James Madison University, I am able to work side by side with my advisor, Dr. Chris Hughes. I am able to experiment with my own ideas and develop my own methods for solving problems. Being dedicated to my work, I was able to gather up enough results to present my work in front of a small crowd at the Virginia Academy of Science meeting at Hampton University in May 2008. This experience was a rush to say the least. I got to show all that I have learned and was quizzed at the end with questions to really prove myself.
Gaining the confidence to go out and do this again, Dr. Hughes recommended me talk at the APS March meeting in Pittsburgh last week. This was a whole new experience. March meeting [according to Dr. Paulson] is one of the biggest Materials Science/Condensed Matter symposiums in the world. There were people everywhere. Like a past researcher in my group said, “I never knew there were that many people out there like me.” This is the absolute truth. Conversations were overheard left and right from the electronic properties of graphene to thin film gold adhesion on polymer substrates. The latter was my topic. I got to give my talk in front of many more people and was the master of the topic in the room. It is a great feeling getting the experience of talking among grad students, professors and even Nobel Prize laureates and teaching them what I know and what I have worked so hard to obtain.
Next year I will be attending the University of California, Santa Barbara. Going to an R1 school like this, I will really be in there with the big dogs. The thing is, I will have more preparation and first hand research experience than most any incoming first years. These past presentations gave me the leg up as an undergraduate scientist."
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Spring Research Symposium - Update 4.9.9
Pictures are linked to a page on the department web site
Thursday, March 26, 2009
It's been a busy recruiting year here in Physics and Astronomy!
I am pleased to announce that Dr. Anca Constantin has agreed to join our department in July this year.
Anca earned her B. S. degree from the University of Bucharest, Romania in 1995 and her Ph. D. from Ohio University in 2004. Since then she has held a postdoctoral position at Drexel University and a fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA. Her research studies the accretion processes in the centers of galaxies. This includes the exploration of black holes at the center of galaxies and the so-called Active Galactic Nuclei. This is an exciting field of research and good complement to existing research in our department. She has been well funded by NASA and the NSF.
We are looking forward to Anca being part of our department and bringing her exciting research program to our students.
The addition of Anca brings us to a total 16 tenured/tenure-track faculty and a total of 21 full-time faculty. We're growing our department and our research opportunities for our students.
Welcome Anca!
Sunday, March 01, 2009
New Faculty Member: Giovanna Scarel
We are excited to announce that in July, Giovanna Scarel will join our department.
Giovanna earned her Laurea in 1994 from the University of Treste, Italy. She earned her Ph.D. in materials engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee in 2001 using infrared spectroscopy to study TiO2 films. From 2001-2007 she was a postdoc and research associate at the CNR-INFM-MDM National Laboratory in Milano, Italy. She comes to us from a postdoc position at North Carolina State University.
Her research is focused on the study of the thin films produced using atomic layer deposition techniques using IR spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and ellipsometry. Of particular interest is the effect that sample geometry has on the optical properties at infrared wavelengths.
Giovanna has published 64 refereed papers and book chapters and been a Co-PI on 8 funded proposals (on 3 of these she took the lead).
We are delighted to have such an accomplished and capable scientist join our department. We anticipate many exciting new opportunities for our students and new collaborations and directions for the materials science group.
Welcome Giovanna!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Fooling Around With High Speed Video
One of the tools that is used for research in the Physics and Astronomy department is a high speed video camera. Just in the process of learning how to use this camera, I took the following videos of a seltzer tablet being dropped into a beaker of water. In the first one, the camera is focused on the water in the beaker. Since the index of refraction of water is 1.33, this means that objects in the water will be slightly out of focus, so when the tablet falls in it get a bit blurry. However, it is still interesting to watch the splash in the water itself and how an air bubble "bounces" from the bottom of the beaker about half way through the video.
In the second take, I focused on an object inside the water so that the tablet would be in focus after it fell in. You can see that it is clearer now. It is interesting to note that the fizzing of the gas being liberated from the tablet doesn't start instantaneously, but seems to be delayed slightly even to the point that the large wave motion of the top of the water has died away by the time it really fizzes strongly.
One of the tools that is used for research in the Physics and Astronomy department is a high speed video camera. Just in the process of learning how to use this camera, I took the following videos of a seltzer tablet being dropped into a beaker of water. In the first one, the camera is focused on the water in the beaker. Since the index of refraction of water is 1.33, this means that objects in the water will be slightly out of focus, so when the tablet falls in it get a bit blurry. However, it is still interesting to watch the splash in the water itself and how an air bubble "bounces" from the bottom of the beaker about half way through the video.
In the second take, I focused on an object inside the water so that the tablet would be in focus after it fell in. You can see that it is clearer now. It is interesting to note that the fizzing of the gas being liberated from the tablet doesn't start instantaneously, but seems to be delayed slightly even to the point that the large wave motion of the top of the water has died away by the time it really fizzes strongly.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Student Presentations at National Meetings
Ralph Herman "Shear stresses in a water/sand system partially fluidized by low-intensity vertical vibration."
This spring our students are once again traveling to national conferences and meetings to present research done with our faculty.
A popular venue for undergraduates is the annual meeting of the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research - NCUR. This year it is held in LaCrosse, WI, April 16-18. This year there are four students making presentations:
Ralph Herman "Shear stresses in a water/sand system partially fluidized by low-intensity vertical vibration."
Ryan Burke "Analyzing gas chromatography data using ROOT"
Patrick Hansen "Gas Chromatography"
Patrick McCauley and Daniel Simonson "Stellar Ages of the Debris Sample"
(Patrick is presenting)
In addition, Bruno Caputo is attending the APS March meeting March 16-20 in Pittsburgh, PA. He is presenting a paper titled "The Promotion of Au Adhesion on Polymer Surfaces Using Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsequioxane." His co-authors include Jonathan Wyrick and Ethan Rosenthal, two other JMU physics students.
Thus, altogether, there are eight physics students who are authors or co-authors on papers and posters at national meeting this spring.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Spring Symposium, 2009
Each spring, we host a physics and astronomy
symposium at which our students present their research. Here is Laurence Lewis presenting his research on big bang nucleosynthesis.
The symposium this year is March 28th (this is a Saturday). This is a couple weeks before the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research has its annual meeting in LaCrosse, Wisconsin (April 16-18). This year we have several students (Patrick Hansen and Ryan Burke among them) presenting their work at this national meeting. This timing for our department symposium gives our students a chance to practice in front of a friendly audience before going out to the 'real world.'
Everyone is invited to join us at the symposium this year. We will have a guest speaker (TBA) and refreshments. It promises to be a good time for all us physics and astronomy geeks.
Bring your thinking cap and come join the fun.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Welcome to the JMU Physics & Astronomy blog. We plan on using this site to let you know about some of the goings on around the JMU Department of Physics and Astronomy. This may include pictures from events, news from the research labs, or profiles of our alumni. Please let us know if you have any content that you think the world needs to see about us and if appropriate, we'll post it here.
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