Physics Newsblog

Category: Academic

Jacek Borysow Interviewed on Department Improvements

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Jacek Borysow Department Improvements
Jacek Borysow

Local students will soon see big improvements in the physics department

Elizabeth and Richard Henes see great potential in Michigan Tech’s physics department. Five years ago, a Tech professor impressed them by using a mouse trap to demonstrate quantum mechanics.

“There are only certain states, like energy [or] velocity which are allowed for the molecule. A mouse trap has only 2 states. One when the spring is loose and one when it is, how do you call it, set. Mr. Henes said thank you for the lecture and handed us a check for seven hundred thousand dollars,” said Jacek Borysow, a Physics Professor at the University.

Read more and watch the video at ABC 10 UP, by Amanda L’Esperence.

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Meet the Physics Faculty and Staff

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Physics Faculty and Staff Fall 2015
Physics Faculty and Staff Fall 2015

From left to right: Andrea Lappi, John Jaszczak, Ranjit Pati, Don Beck, Bob Weidman, Wil Slough, Ramy El-Ganainy, Brian Fick, Claudio Mazzoleni, Bryan Suits, Miguel Levy, Alex Kostinski, Debbie Linn, Kimberly Oldt, Ravi Pandey, Will Cantrell, Yoke Khin Yap, Ray Shaw, Petra Huentemeyer, Bob Nemiroff, Jacek Borysow, and Max Seel.

Find all of the faculty and staff of the Department of Physics.

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Professor Yoke Khin Yap Awarded Title of Global Alumni Fellow

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Global Alumni Fellow
Yoke Khin Yap is a Global Alumni Fellow

Yoke Khin Yap (Physics) was awarded by Osaka University in Japan with the title of Global Alumni Fellow. The newly established award is granted to alumni who are academically active overseas. Yap is among the first few honorees joining alumni from Purdue, Pennsylvania, Columbia, The National Institute of Health, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Cambridge and others.

Yap has been an active alumni of Osaka University. He is one of the founding members and board of directors of the Osaka University North American Alumni Association (OU-NAAA) created in January 2006. OU-NAAA helps alumni in North America connect with the university, students and faculty through social and academic networking activities.

From Tech Today.

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Meyer Gives the Keynote for Student Technology Conference

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STC 2015Mike Meyer gave the keynote address on Wednesday, June 17, 2015, for the Student Technology Conference held in Houghton this week. The conference concerns content-rich academic, computing, and telecommunications technologies in student living areas. The keynote address was entitled “The Transition to Teaching 24:7.”

Meyer is a Senior Lecturer in Physics and the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning on campus.

The conference is a ResNet activity. ResNet is an international organization providing a forum for discussion, collaboration, and development for IT professionals in higher education. The conference runs June 16-19, 2015.

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Mike Meyer on Classroom Control

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Mike Meyer
Mike Meyer

Michael Meyer, director of Michigan Tech’s William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning, was quoted in an article in Inside Higher Education about how a professor should regain control of a class (or not lose control in the first place).

From Tech Today.

How Not to Lose Control of a Class

“I haven’t seen anywhere near somebody losing control to the extent we saw at Texas A&M as it’s been reported, but I have seen cases on different campuses where it’s very clear that the learning is done,” said Michael R. Meyer, a professor of physics and director of Michigan Technological University’s William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning. “That happens when somebody says or does something that fractures the relationship with at least a significant proportion of the students, and there really isn’t a trust anymore.”

At that point, Meyer said, professors and students alike tend to go into “survival” mode, where the goal is simply getting through the end of the course. A common cause of such friction? Students feeling like they’re being held accountable for behavioral expectations that weren’t made clear to them, Meyer said. These expectations go beyond which assignments are due when. Rather, they address such behaviors as cell phone, computer and social media use in class, how to ask questions and what happens when someone shows up late.

“If you don’t address them, or talk about them with students, there’s bound to be bad feelings on both sides,” Meyer said.

Read more at Inside Higher Education, by Colleen Flaherty.

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Swarup China accepted to participate in ACCESS XIII

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Dr. Swarup China former graduate student in the Atmospheric Sciences program at MTU, has been accepted to participate in ACCESS XIII, to be convened at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) (July 31 – August 2, 2015), and to attend the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) in Atmospheric Chemistry. Participation to ACCESS is highly competitive and it is an honor to be accepted.

Information about the conference can be found here.

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Ramy El-Ganainy is a Guest Focus Editor for New Journal of Physics

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NJPAssistant Professor of Physics Ramy El-Ganainy is a co-guest editor for an upcoming “focus on” issue article in the New Journal of Physics (NJP). The focus is entitled “Parity-Time Symmetry in Optics and Photonics.” Focus issue articles are invited-only contributions from experts in the field. They provide an overview of the current status of this research field and serve as a guiding compass for future developments.

NJP articles are open access and completely free to read. NJP offers the unusual opportunity for authors to submit video abstracts as a new content stream. Video media enable authors to go beyond the constraints of the written article and to further increase the visibility of the authors and their work.

NJP “focus on” articles are published incrementally during their windows for submissions. For “Parity-Time Symmetry in Optics and Photonics,” the window for submissions is August 1, 2015 to February 15, 2016.

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MAGS Honorable Mention for Amanda Shaw

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Amanda ShawThe Graduate School is pleased to announce that Amanda Shaw was awarded Honorable Mention for the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) Excellence in Teaching Award at the master’s level. Shaw was awarded the Outstanding Teaching Award at Michigan Tech in the spring of 2014.

One of her most notable accomplishments as an instructor has been redesigning how Introduction to Astronomy is taught on campus and online. In the classroom, she utilizes many active learning techniques, including astronomy playing cards, manual clicker cards, in-class projects and mini-lectures. Shaw adopts a similar format online, involving students in mini-lectures created with Camtasia and embedded with rich video content from NASA and quizzes. She plans to publish a paper comparing and contrasting the student learning outcomes in the on campus and online version of the identical course.

Shaw was nominated by Ravi Pandey (Physics) and is advised by Alexander Kostinski (Physics). She is pursuing a Masters in Physics.

From Tech Today.

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