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Professor of Physics Emeritus Philip Pearle presented a mini-course at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and published a paper on his Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) theory of wave function collapse.

Four fundamental forces - gravity, electricity, the strong force and the weak force - control all of the subatomic interactions that exist in our universe. The strong force dictates interactions between molecules in a nucleus while the weak force governs the process of radioactive decay.  The scientific community currently understands the first three forces well, but obtaining knowledge about the weak force has challenged physics researchers for decades. Andrew Morrison ’14 and Jacob Davidson ’15 are contributing to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aCORN Project, to gain a better understanding of the weak force.

Philip Pearle, professor of physics emeritus, was an invited speaker on May 28 at “The Quantum Landscape,” a conference held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

Most people are aware that blowing across the top of a bottle produces a tone, or driving on the highway with an open sunroof yields uncomfortably loud turbulence.  The physics behind daily occurrences similar to these regularly go unnoticed, but not so by Bennett Heussler ’15.  He decided to study what causes these sounds and to reexamine previous experiments related to these observations.

Professor of Physics Emeritus Philip Pearle was one of four invited speakers at a meeting of the National Resource Council’s Committee on Atomic, Molecular and Optical Science.

Twelve of Hamilton’s outstanding female science students are the first recipients of the Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Award. The new annual award will fund up to 12 female scientists each summer over the course of three years as Clare Boothe Luce Scholars in the fields of computer science, physics and chemistry. The $144,600 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation will be matched with funds from Hamilton.

Dean of Faculty Patrick Reynolds visited Professor Gordon Jones’ “Physics 190: The Mechanical Universe” class last week to help illustrate some laws of physics.  Lying on a bed of nails, Reynolds demonstrated the difference between force and pressure. In comparing a bed with a single nail to one with hundreds of nails in both cases the force (Reynolds’ weight) is the same, but the pressure is different.  On a bed of hundreds of nails the force is spread over many nails in the same way that pressure depends on the area over which a force is spread.

Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connolly was a co-author of an article published in the Sept. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The article, “The BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey. II. Investigating Mass-density Profile Evolution in the SLACS+BELLS Strong Gravitational Lens Sample,” presents the results of research into possible ways in which the density in the centers of the biggest galaxies has increased over the last six billion years.

Five Hamilton students who spent the summer working in science-related internships had the opportunity to share information on their experiences in the first event in a new Career Center series on Sept. 24.

Hamilton physics concentrators Nick Sylvester ’13, Jill Hallak ’13, Kerkira Stockton ’14 and Brandon Wilson ’14 have spent the summer conducting research for the aCORN collaborative, a project being carried out by five universities and colleges and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).