Physics Colloquium
Michigan Technological University
Thursday, April 3, 2014
at 4:00 pm
Room 139 Fisher Hall
Search for Long-lived Weakly Interacting Particles
with the Pierre Auger Observatory
Niraj Dhital
Advisor: Brian Fick
2014 ATM Seminar Series Continues
The following two presentations will be presented on Monday, March 31, 4 p.m. in Fisher 126: “A Study of Chemical Climatology for Pico Mountain Observatory” by Bo Zhang and “Evolution of Soot Morphology in Controlled Laboratory Conditions: Effect of Relative Humidity and Organic Coating” by Noopur Sharma.
The Western UP Center has posted results and photos of the 2014 science fair held at the Memorial Union on March 25, 2014.
View Results, Project Pictures, Festival Pictures, and News
Science comes to life
Fourth- through eighth-graders attend science fair
From whether water concentration varies with snow depth to whether colored overlays improve readability, students asked questions and showed their answers Tuesday night at the Western U.P. Science Fair and Science and Engineering Festival.
Additionally, students, their families and the public attended the Science & Engineering Festival downstairs in the Memorial Union Building. Exhibits ranged from 3-D printers to how to clean oil spills. Unlike previous years, the festival was also open to children not participating in the fair.
Read more at the Mining Gazette, by Garrett Neese.
Copper Country students show off their work at regional science fair
The Memorial Union Building at Michgian Tech was filled with student from grades four through eight for the annual Western U.P. Science Fair yesterday…not a bad turnout for an event that started off with six students participating in its first year.
And the activities were wide-ranging, from making silly putty using glue to making ice cream using liquid nitrogen. One demo that caught the eye of many involved a vaccuum and a ball. Physics lab associate Scott Rutterbush explained what happens.
“When we take a ball and we place it in the stream of air, what you actually get is, the air around it pushes up on the ball slightly, allowing it to spin and holds it in the air,” he said.
Read more and watch the video at ABC 10 WBUP WBKP, by Mike Hoey.
Physics Colloquium
Michigan Technological University
Thursday, March 27, 2014
at 4:00 pm
Room 139 Fisher Hall
Investigating Hadronic Interactions with Cosmic Ray Physics
by Tolga Yapici
Advisor: Dr. Brian Fick
Physics Colloquium
Michigan Technological University
Thursday, March 27, 2014
at 4:00 pm
Room 139 Fisher Hall
A Study of Enhancement in Faraday Rotation and
Circular Dichroism in Ultra-Thin Magnetic Garnet Films
by Ashim Chakravarty
Advisor: Dr. Miguel Levy
15th Annual Western UP Science Fair and Festival Tuesday
The 15th Annual UP Science and Engineering Festival will be held 4:30-7:30 pm, Tuesday, March 25.
From 4:30-7:30 pm, K-8 students and their families may participate in the Science and Engineering Festival that will offer more than two dozen fun, hands-on engineering, physics, biological sciences, chemistry activities conducted by fifty Michigan Tech students in the Memorial Union Building Commons (ground floor).
Activities are facilitated by Biomedical Engineering students, Society of Physics Students, Dept of Chemistry students, Biological Sciences students, Engineers Without Borders, and more!
Read more at Tech Today.
Vice President for Research Announces Faculty Fellows Selections
The Office of the Vice President for Research has selected the 2014 recipients of the newly implemented Faculty Fellow Program. The first Faculty Fellows for 2014-2015 are: Larry Sutter (MSE), for Sponsored Program Administration, Adrienne Minerick (ChE) for Strategic Planning and Budget, and Yoke Khin Yap (Physics) for Economic Development and Technology Commercialization.
From Tech Today.
A Faculty Fellow in Economic Development and Technology Commercialization will be involved in areas such as IP commercialization and startup support.
Physics researchers at Michigan Tech produced some results of interactions of boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) and amino acids through the use of density functional theory. The 2011 paper entitled “Sensitivity of Boron Nitride Nanotubes toward Biomolecules of Different Polarities” (DOI: 10.1021/jz2010557) created the following response in a recent experimental paper “Facile and Mild Strategy Toward Biopolymer-Coated Boron Nitride Nanotubes via a Glycine-Assisted Interfacial Process” (DOI: 10.1021/jp4073729):
Inspired by these theoretical investigations, we set about to assess experimentally the interactions of BNNTs with glycine. We discovered that this simple amino acid is remarkably efficient in breaking up pristine BNNT bundles, yielding hydrophilic BNNTs dispersed in water as individual, debundled, nanotubes.
Authors of the theoretical study include Saikat Mukhopadhyay, Ralph H. Scheicher, Ravindra Pandey, and Shashi P. Karna.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Physics Gowtham attended the HPC (High-Performance Center) Advisory Council Conference and Exascale Workshop at Stanford University in February 2014. Gowtham presented “Streamlining Computing Infrastructure: A Small School’s Experience.”
International Science Grid This Week (iSGTW) interviewed Gowtham regarding the issues and challenges experienced by Michigan Tech during this overhaul of research computing. The interview appeared in the February 12, 2014, article “How one small school streamlined research-computing infrastructure,” by Amber Harmon.
Gowtham is an HPC Research Scientist for Information Technology Services at Michigan Tech. Learn more about high-performance computing at campus.
Physics Colloquium
Michigan Technological University
Thursday, March 20, 2014
at 4:00 pm
Room 139 Fisher Hall
Asymmetric Wave Transport in Structures with Parity-Time symmetry
Tsampikos Kottos
Douglas J. and Midge Bowen Bennet Endowed Associate Professor Chair of Physics
Wesleyan University