Andrew Ratkiewicz, who graduated in 2006 with a B.S. in physics and a minor in math, was honored with the 2024 Alumni of the Year Award for the School of Natural Sciences at the 3rd annual Night of the Titans event on Tuesday, September 17th, 2024. Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus Jerry Hinnefeld was featured in a… Read more »
Honors Night 2024
The College of Arts & Sciences celebrated its annual Honors Night on Thursday, May 2nd. The Department of Physics & Astronomy gave several awards: Excellence Award in Physics Phillip Derrickson Ƶ Scholarship (for 2024 – 2025) Nicholas Good CTS Scholarship in Physics (for 2024 – 2025) Akira Clark Cosmo Cripe Ryleigh Jebson Josiah Nelson
Special Eclipse-Education Meet the Stars Events in January, February and March
Please join IU South Bend faculty and student hosts for all-ages educational programming designed as preparation for the April 8th, 2024, solar eclipse (link to NASA’s eclipse site). These events are free, open to the public, and all are welcome! These are intended to be fun yet educational and structured so that attendees have… Read more »
New Endowment: Dr. and Mrs. Thomas R. Connon Physics and Astronomy Department Fund
We are pleased to announce that a new endowment has been established to support the Department of Physics & Astronomy: Dr. and Mrs. Thomas R. Connon Physics and Astronomy Department Fund Dr. Thomas Connon, O.D., and his wife, Sue Ann Connon, were both students at IUSB in the 1970s. Dr. Connon worked closely with Professors… Read more »
Physics Club Hosts Renewable Energy Competition for IUSB Sustainability Challenge
As part of this month’s Sustainability Challenge (a series of campus-wide activities related to IU’s Climate Action Plan), the Physics Club hosted a “Renewable Energy Competition” on Tuesday, October 24th. Although billed as a competition, this was more of a fun, participation-based activity to get people together and think about renewable-energy technology — harnessing wind… Read more »
2023 Adams’ Night at the Observatory
Physics faculty members Jerry Hinnefeld and Henry Scott hosted the Adams High School Science Department Chair, Matthew McQueen, and students from two of his Fall 2023 astronomy classes, for a special Meet the Stars event at the IUSB Observatory on Monday, October 16th. There were over twenty people in the Adams group, including some parents… Read more »
DTSI Internships at LLNL (Deadline: 1/26/2024)
Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) offers summer student programs including the Defense Science and Technology Internship (DTSI) with many options that may be of high appeal to physics students. The program includes close mentorship with a staff scientist. Here’s a link to a flyer for the 2024 program: DSTI flyer 2024.pdf. We’re posting information about… Read more »
2023 Welcome Back Fair
The Physics Club staffed a table for the Fall 2023 Welcome Back Fair on Monday, August 21st21, with members and faculty taking turns to greet students and welcome new members to the club.
Dataloggers for the Classroom and Industry
Four physics majors are working with Dr. Davis and Dr. Levine on data logger projects. These are devices which control and read input from sensors and save them to an SD card for later use. Thus far, their designs utilize an Arduino microcontroller, custom circuit boards, and a simplified C-like open-source language. Versions have been… Read more »
Physics-Marine Biology Collaboration to Reduce Shark Bycatch
IUSB physics professors Ilan Levine and Brian Davis, in coordination with emeritus biology professor Peter Bushnell, have established a broad collaboration with three different teams of marine biologists in an effort to reduce shark bycatch – the inadvertent catching of sharks – in commercial fishing operations. Notably, sharks have an organ which detects electric fields,… Read more »