Prof. Jerry Hinnefeld arranged for IUSB to host a successful meeting of the Indiana Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (INAAPT) on Friday evening and Saturday (April 12 and 12). All physics faculty attended, and both Profs. Hinnefeld and Ilan Levine gave presentations about their teaching efforts. As a nice surprise, alumnus Austin… Read more »
Departmental News
Student Presentations at IUSB’s 2019 URC
The 2019 Undergraduate Research Conference was held on April 12, 2019, and several physics majors gave talks in a session entitled “X-Rays, Electrons, Bacteria and Dark Matter:” Nathan Walkoski: Dark Matter Acoustics Skye McDonald (actually a biology major): A Simple Test of Using Powder X-Ray Diffraction to Quantify Calcite to Aragonite Fraction in Carbonate Samples… Read more »
Congratulations (and Thanks!) to Beth for Five Years of Service to the Department
Associate faculty member Beth Marchant was recognized for five years of service on Wednesday, April 10th. She has revamped PHYS-T 105 (Physical Science for Elementary Teachers) to include lots of active and project-based learning, and she participates in the scholarship of teaching and learning with presentations of her observations and experiences at AAPT meetings. She… Read more »
REU for Physics Major
Current physics major Jeff Yoder (`20) has received and will accept a position in the Oklahoma State University REU program this summer. Hopefully he’ll be willing to give a talk about his experience in PHYS-S 106 during Fall 2019. Congratulations, Jeff!
Visualizing Acoustic Modes in Instrument Materials
In a previous post, we featured ongoing work in our department by alums Tom Nania (Physics, ’13) and Alex LeClair (Computer Science and Applied Math, ’16) that’s connected to Tom’s local instrument-fabrication business, House of Luthiery. Here’s a video of Tom using a speaker to drive a wood sample at a known frequency while measuring… Read more »
3-D Printed Sample Holders for X-Ray Lab
Physics Education major Chandarin Nhol is the local guru with our 3-D printer, and after seeing the cool nose cones he’s been printing for model rockets, I asked if he could help solve a problem I’ve been having with our X-ray diffractometer. Briefly, the sample holders we’ve been using are made of aluminum, and although… Read more »
Prof. Levine Receives New NSF Award
Congratulations to professor Ilan Levine for securing new National Science Foundation funding in support of his work! The proposal title is MRI Consortium: Development of Instrumentation for the PICO-500 Bubble Chamber, and the award is for >$770k. Specifically, the funding will support Prof. Levine and his collaborators as they help to develop and fabricate a ton-scale… Read more »
Planets, planets, planets!
Four bright planets — Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars — spread across the ecliptic from West to Southeast were the stars of the show at tonight’s “Meet the Stars” public observing event. We also viewed Pluto (maybe) and Neptune, and wrapped up the evening with the Ring Nebula (M57). Venus and Jupiter were bright enough to… Read more »
Fall 2018 Welcome Week
We had an impressive showing of SPS / Physics Club members in the courtyard today to catch up and welcome new students:
Alumni on Campus Doing R&D for Automated Characterization of Materials for Musical Instruments
Tom Nania (left, Physics, ’13) and Alex LeClair (right, Computer Science and Applied Math, ’16), both of whom worked in Prof. Levine’s astroparticle research group, are working together to build a machine to automate the process of characterizing wood to be used for hand-made musical instruments. Notably, Tom is now an Affiliated Scholar in our… Read more »