2015 recipient Mick Small (right) accepts the award from alumnus Dr. Joe Kuehl (left).
Left to right: Alumnus Joe Kuehl, Dr. Raymond Shaw, Mick Small, Raven Stone, Dr. Will Cantrell, Cody Bell, Eric Morris, Adam Laxo, Luke Schroeder, Dr. Ravi Pandey.
Professor Yoke Khin Yap (Physics) held a workshop for ninth-grade students from three local high schools over the weekend. The theme of the workshop was Introduction to Nanotechnology and was part of the outreach and education activities in Yap’s research grant funded by the National Science Foundation.
This workshop was co-organized by Michigan Tech’s GEAR UP, a Pre-College Innovative Outreach Institute, with the assistance of Liz Fujita. The goal of the workshop was to help stimulate the interest of pre-college underrepresented groups (girls, students with dissability, etc.). A total of 104 female students from Houghton, Calumet and Lake Linden participated with their science teachers.
During the workshop, students were introduced to the concept of nanoscale and hands-on experience in making molecular structures. Following lunch there was a discussion on the potential applications of nanoscale materials. “Since Michigan Tech is the only research-intensive university in the area, we regularly provide educational support to the local communities,” says Yap. More outreach events like this are planned during the three-year research project.
Mont Ripley partnered with the Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College PEAR Center, to provide 13 Middle and high school age kids with 10 ski or snowboard lessons, paid for with a grant from the Department of Education. To fulfill the grant, the students had to participate in a science-related activity. The science activity was provided by Michigan Tech physicists Dustin Winslow, and Chiumun Michelle Hui, who presented “The Physics of Skiing.”
Members of the Department of Physics and alumni attended the 2015 Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) on March 4-9 in San Antonio, Texas.
Attendees affiliated with Michigan Tech were alumni Saikat Mukhopadhyay (’12, now at Oak Ridge National Lab), Partha Pal (’11, now at Northwestern University), Subhasish Mandal (’12, now at Yale University), Pradeep Kumar (’13, now at University of Wisconsin–Madison), Xiaoliang Zhong (’13, now at Argonne National Lab), physics graduate students Gaoxue Wang and Kamal Dhungana, Prof. Ranjit Pati, and Chair of Physics Prof. Ravi Pandey.
The APS March Meeting 2015 had over 10,000 in attendance.
PhD Students Learn to Communicate their Research
Alex Mayer, the Charles and Patricia Nelson Presidential Professor at Michigan Tech, runs a fellowship program that teaches PhD students in a variety of fields to explain their research in K-12 classrooms and to write news releases to communicate with the public through the media.
Here are this year’s student releases.
Communicating Nanoscience and Engineering – Possibilities and Pitfalls
Nanoscale science and engineering is a flourishing field that holds great potential for solving current and future problems.
But what is the best way to communicate with an audience unfamiliar with the nanoscience and engineering community? Yoke Khin Yap, professor of physics and adjunct professor of materials science and engineering, says, “In order to communicate really effectively, you need to speak in their language.”
Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Jennifer Donovan, Anika Kuczynski and others.
Lake Superior in my driveway: lake effect snow in the Keweenaw
Raymond Shaw
Carnegie Museum Seminar
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
6:30 pm Refreshments and introductions
7-8 pm Seminar and discussion
Carnegie Museum Community Room, Downtown Houghton
Carnegie Community Natural History Discussion Jan. 13
Professor Raymond Shaw (Physics) will lead a discussion on lake effect snow titled “Lake Superior in My Driveway: Lake Effect Snow in the Keweenaw?” on Tuesday, Jan. 13, at the Carnegie Museum in Houghton.
This discussion is part of a monthly series on the geoheritage and natural history of the Keweenaw. The discussions are aimed at the general public, but discuss current research and science.
The museum will open at 6:30 p.m. for refreshments, with the lecture and discussion beginning at 7 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. For questions, contact the Carnegie Museum at 482-7140.
Lecture: Lake Superior in my driveway: lake effect snow in the Keweenaw?
Professor Shaw explains his discussion: “Whether you enjoy skiing, snow shoeing, or sledding, and in fact even if you simply endure the snow shoveling, lake effect snow is part of daily life in the Keweenaw for almost half of the year. Our peninsular home is surrounded by Lake Superior, which when conditions are right, becomes a giant snow-making machine.”
VIEW THE PHOTO GALLERY
The PH3210 Optics Lab would like to invite you to a poster session, which will be happening on Tuesday, December 9th from 3:00pm-4:00pm in the Fisher Atrium.
The Optics Lab students will be presenting posters detailing experiments they have performed in class or projects that they have created themselves related to the coursework. We would love for you to come and ask questions and see what the Optics Lab has been up to this year.
Almetric, a website that tracks readership of scientific articles, reports that an article in arXIV—an archive of electronic science articles—about Professor Robert Nemiroff’s (Physics) search of the Internet for evidence of time travelers ranked second among the top 100 articles of 2014.
According to Almetric, this is one of the highest-ever scores in this journal, ranking second of 193,503. Almetric says this score puts the article in the top 5 percent of all articles, ranked by attention.
Almetric also reports that the story appeared in 29 news outlets, 22 blogs, 2,174 tweets, 265 Facebook posts, 52 Google+ mentions, 14 times on Reddit and one video.
Michigan Tech published a news story about Nemiroff’s time traveler research.
Since 1999, the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum has recognized individuals for excellence in earth science education with the Charles A. Salotti Earth Science Education Award. Now the mineral museum has a new partner in selecting the awardee: the Michigan Earth Science Teachers Association (MESTA).
“I am delighted that MESTA has agreed to partner with the museum to advance informal earth science education,” said John Jaszczak, museum adjunct curator and professor of physics, who has played a key role in the Salotti Award since its inception. “My own path to becoming a scientist started with informal mentoring in the mineral collecting hobby.”