On October 25th, students and faculty from the First-Year Seminar (Physics 100) class went to dinner at Sitar, a local Indian restaurant and department favorite. Eleven of the twelve students, and four of the five faculty came to dinner, and feasted on reshmi kebab, lamb vindaloo, chicken tikka masala and the ever-popular “special naan.”
Three physics majors presented posters at the Fall Meeting of the Division of Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society (DNPAPS) in Newport News, VA, October 11-13. Richie Bonventre (’08) presented his work on the “Extraction of Yields for Neutral Meson Photoproduction from the Proton and Helium-3 with the CLAS Detector at Jefferson Lab.” “Fiducial Volumes for Photons Detected in the Forward Calorimeters of the CLAS Detector at JLab” was the title of the poster presented by Christian Shultz (’08). Crystal Smith reported on her work on the “Analysis of Proton-Rich Elemental Abundances Created in Outflows from Gamma-Ray Burst Accretion Disks.” Richie and Christian work with Prof. Michael Vineyard on their projects and Crystal is working with Prof. Rebecca Surman. Ninety-seven undergraduate posters were presented at the meeting, and all three of the Union College students were awarded lodging and travel grants from the Conference Experience for Undergraduates program of the DNPAPS.
Pictures from the meeting: Richie Bonventre, Christian Shultz, Crystal Smith
(See also the story in the Union College Chronicle)
On October 9th, 2007 the Union College chapter of the Society of Physics Students organized a bus trip to Boston. Nine students and two faculty from the department spent the morning visiting the MIT Museum, where they played with an interactive topographic mapping system (seen at left), and saw exhibits on the history of robotics at MIT and a display of kinetic sculpture.
After lunch, the group visited the research group of Wolfgang Ketterle, who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on Bose-Einstein Condensation. The students received tours of two of the Ketterle labs, before splitting up to spend the afternoon in Boston.
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