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 that’s not normally a problem, we’ve been running some “light” samples for which diffracted X-rays from the holders themselves have caused some unwanted interference.

Using 3-D CAD software he quickly sketched up plans to duplicate the dimensions of an original holder and printed two holders this afternoon . They look great — thanks, Chandarin!

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 dark matter detector.

Prof. Levine has a strong history of obtaining external support for his highly collaborative work in astro-particle physics, and he has included many undergraduate researchers in his projects in addition to high-school teachers and students as well. Below is a picture of him with his astro-particle group from Summer 2017:

Rear Left to Right: Brendan Tubbs, science teacher, Adams HS; Aaron Roeder, IUSB grad, now an engineering PhD student at U. Notre Dame; Levi Klopfenstein, IUSB physics major; David Giger, now engineering major at U. Notre Dame; Paige Oedekerk, IUSB grad and now a researcher at Whirlpool corporation.
Front Left to Right: Ed Behnke, engineer; Kelly Allen, Elkhart HS now a freshman physics major, IUSB; Prof. Levine; Nathan Walkowski, IUSB Physics Major.

We had an impressive showing of SPS / Physics Club members in the courtyard today to catch up and welcome new students:

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 department, continuing to work with Prof. Levine specifically on acoustical problems, while also owning and operating the House of Luthiery. Meanwhile, Alex is working toward a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Notre Dame. It’s great to have them back on campus and continuing to collaborate!

Seniors Levi Klopfenstein (Physics, left) and Skye McDonald (Biology, right) are starting a new collaboration to use the IU South Bend powder X-ray diffraction lab to distinguish calcite vs aragonite-structured carbonates in synthetic and natural samples.

I finally built up enough courage to interrupt Prof. Schimmrigk and his current research students, Deepu Sengupta and Johnathan Leece, for a photo.