All News

A paper by Professor of Physics Ann Silversmith and former Hamilton students Nguyen T.T. Nguyen '08 and Dan Campbell '08, has been published in the December 2009 issue of the Journal of Luminescence. The article, "Fluorescence yield in rare earth doped sol-gel silicate glasses," was also co-authored by Carlos Ortiz '08 and Dan Boye of Davidson College and Kurt Hoffman of Whitman College.

Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connolly has been awarded computing time on the TeraGrid, an open scientific super-computing infrastructure funded by the National Science Foundation. This award is for her work with ultra-high luminous infra-red galaxies (ULIRGs) and will allow her to continue her research begun last summer with Will Eagan '11 and University of Pennsylvania Postdoctoral Researcher Brian Connolly.

The electroweak force describes the confluence of two fundamental forces in nature (out of four): the electromagnetic force, and the weak force. “Electroweak” is a funny sounding name to begin with, and “weak force” does not sound very scientific – but both are, in fact, complicated concepts in particle physics. The weak force alone governs beta decay and its associated radioactivity. But when combined with the electromagnetic force, it controls neutron beta decay. The aCORN project is an effort to more accurately measure the electron antineutrino correlation termed “little a,” one of the parameters for neutron beta decay. This summer, William Bauder ’10 worked on the aCORN project at Indiana University, which collaborates with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Professor of Physics Gordon Jones guided him through the research.

Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connelly published an article in the Astrophysical Journal titled "An Evolutionary Paradigm for Dusty Active Galaxies at Low Redshift." With co-authors from the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell and Caltech, Connelly considered a number of mid-infrared spectra of active galaxies obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The paper "Stable Homology as an Indicator of Manifoldlikeness in Causal Set Theory" by Associate Professor of Physics Seth Major and collaborators David Rideout (Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada) and Sumati Surya (Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India) was published Friday, Aug. 14, in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.

Physicists are often forced to work through tedious preparations only to take quick measurements and arrive at small, sometimes inconsequential conclusions. Therefore, much of modern research consists of trying to find ways to increase efficiency without sacrificing quality results. Lauren Vilardo ’11 and Valerie Hanson ’10 are developing a faster, more accurate measurement of the absolute polarization of 3Helium (3He). This summer they're collaborating with Professor of Physics Gordon Jones and Associate Professor of Physics Brian Collett to do so. 

While other summer researchers in physics are working on projects like aCORN and the SEOP neutron polarizer, Andrew Portuguese ’11 is like a stage technician who jumps between multiple projects. He is currently creating a graphical user interface for a magnetic field mapper along with Professor of Physics Gordon Jones. The interface and mapper are designed to better the lives of scientists at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

An article by Michael Gregg ’08 and Associate Professor of Physics Seth Major titled “On Modified Dispersion Relations and the Chandrasekhar Mass Limit,” has been published in the International Journal of Modern Physics D [Vol 18 (2009) 971]. In the article, based on Gregg’s senior project, they report on the results of their study of the consequences of modifying special relativity.

A physicist is different from a biologist or chemist in that his data will always be open to debate. No matter how hard he tries, he will not be able to flawlessly measure a physical value, whether it is momentum, magnetic field, or moment of inertia. According to him, uncertainty behaves asymptotically – the range of error gets closer and closer to zero but never reaches it. Scientists are especially fond of tacking more decimal places onto physical constants, like gravity. They make it their goal to alleviate uncertainty as much as possible.

Three Hamilton College faculty members will be promoted to the rank of professor, effective July 1. Associate professors Gordon Jones, physics; Craig Latrell, theatre; and Ann Owen, economics, will receive the title of professor.