Prof. Vineyard Presents at AAPT Meeting, Gordon Conference

Michael F. Vineyard, the Frank & Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Physics, presented a poster titled “The Upper-Level Laboratory at Union College” at the 2010 Gordon Research Conference on Physics Research and Education at Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Mass. in June, and at the 2010 Summer Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers in Portland, Oregon, in July. The poster, co-authored by physics senior lecturer Scott LaBrake, professor Seyffie Maleki and associate professor Chad Orzel, highlighted some of the development work they did on experiments in an advanced laboratory course.

Physics and Astronomy Summer Research 2010

Once again, we are happy to have a large collection of students and faculty working on research this summer. Many (but not all) of them are shown here:

Summer Research Students and Faculty 2010

In this picture: Front row (left to right): Katie Schuff, Ana Mikler, Katie O’Brien, Colin Gleason, Chad Harrington. Second row: Anna Sise, Erin Osgood, Prof. LaBrake, Prof. Maleki. Third row: Prof. Orzel, Tim Kuehn, Prof. Reich, Mark Sullivan, Prof. Marr. Fourth row: Pavel Aprelev, Hannah Ryan, Rob Moore, Prof. Koopmann, SreyNoch Chin, Colin Turley, Prof. Vineyard. Back row: Adam Margulies, John Sheehan, Pengfei Zhang, Prof. Wilkin, Prof. Newman, Amer Khraisat, Prof. Amanuel.

For more information on summer research at Union, see the Undergraduate Research Page, or come to the Summer Student Seminar Series.

Undergraduate Researchers Meet at Union to Discuss Gas Content of Galaxies

ALFALFA Workshop group photo

Members of the NSF-sponsored Undergraduate ALFALFA Team met June 30, 2010, for a Summer Research Workshop. 20 participants from Union, Siena, Skidmore, and Hartwick Colleges reported progress on their research projects analyzing data from the Arecibo Legacy ALFA Survey, a survey of gas in nearby galaxies. In the afternoon, students and faculty at more distant institutions joined the group at Union for a
Summer Research Progress Telecon. Students presented brief summaries of progress at their institutions. Many of the schools are
researching the gas content of galaxies in moderately dense “group” environments and collaborating to compare and publish the results.

Union students SreyNoch Chin, ’12, Halley Darling, ’13, Ana Mikler, ’12, and Katie O’Brien, ’11, participated in the workshop and
presented their results during the telecon. Ana Mikler was the leader of an activity to demonstrate how to create contour maps of gas emission from galaxies. Each group followed her instructions to produce a contour map for one of their galaxy sources.