Department News
Fall 2004 - Spring 2005
2005 Graduating Class: 10
Physics: Anthony Annunziata, Dan Barrie, Cynthia Castellon, Doug Park, Mike Ritter, Nate Smiley and Justin Spencer
Astronomy-Physics: Nikki Cassano and Geoff Siegel
Astrogeophysics: Trisha Hutchins
PICNIC 2005 - a final farewell festivity to our senior class majors....
Physics 310/410 Student Research Symposium was held on Tuesday, May 3. Read more about their research talks on our Student Research pages.
Physics Club Senior Prank, May 3, 2005 -
Awards presented this year at the 2005 Convocation Award Ceremony on Tuesday, April 26:
Edwin Foster Kingsbury Prize (Established as an annual award to those students whose performance and promise is judged by the department to be the most outstanding during the year of the award): Sarah Hale, Nikhil Fernandes, Dobromir Kamburov, Ushnish Ray
Physics and Astronomy Founders Award (Awarded periodically to a senior who has demonstrated four years of outstanding progress and development of his or her understanding of physics or astronomy.): Geoffrey Siegel
Physics and Astronomy Alumni Award (Awarded to those students concentrating in physics and astronomy, who, in the opinion of the department, have made the most significant progress in the study of their major subject and the relations of this science to other fields of learning: Anthony Annunziata
Physics Club participates in the Cabin Fever Festival 2005
Books published in 2004:
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- The Eye that Sees Itself by Shimon Malin (Morning Light Press Publishers)
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Physics major Justin Spencer '05 named Sports Television's Student-Athlete of the week (12/15/04). Spencer was recently featured in a news article.
Ken Segall receives a research grant from Research Corporation on "Nonlinear Dynamics in Superconducting Networks."
Colgate Chapter of the Society for Physics Students' first activity: Rocket Day. Check out a recent story about the physics club in this link.
Physics Club Members launch Sigma Pi Sigma Honor Society on November 16, 2004. Inductees are (see photo below): Michelle Cooper, Krystle Williams, Nicole Cassano, Stephanie Wortel, Christina Viviano, Cynthia Castellon, Everett Riley, Jarrett Moyer, Anthony Annunziata, Justin Spencer.
Joe Amato's research has resulted in an article, "Vortex Pinning Arrays Produced by Nano-oxidataion Using an Atomic Force Microscope" to be published in the very prestigious "Applied Physics Letters" (July 5, 2004 issue): Using our atomic force microscope (AFM), I’ve patterned the surface of superconducting thin films with a square array of oxide dots of diameter 250 nm, spaced by 400 nm. The dots are effective in pinning superconducting vortices, and the patterned thin films are being used to study the motion of vortices through the pinning sites. Many researchers have found ways to pin vortices, but our technique has some advantages: the spacing, symmetry, orientation, and degree of order of the pinning array can be controlled by simple software commands, and the strength of each individual pinning site can be controlled by voltage.
Beth Parks has just been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for her project "Magnetic Tunneling and Relaxation in Single Molecule Magnets Examined Using Terahertz Spectroscopy". This award is a wonderful recognition of the significance of research and also advances the University's reputation. It is funded for three years for a total of $120,000: Quantum tunneling is one of the hallmarks of quantum mechanics; its occurrence in a material guarantees that this material’s properties cannot be explained by classical mechanics alone. In the twentieth century, the properties of very small quantum mechanical systems like atoms became fairly well understood. Now physicists are attempting to understand what happens when quantum mechanics becomes important for larger systems. This project hopes to expand our understanding of quantum mechanical tunneling in the material Mn12-acetate, in which clusters of atoms behave as nanoscale magnets that can tunnel from one orientation to another. Besides being of fundamental scientific interest, this line of research may also lead to denser memory storage for computers or even to quantum computers. These possible future applications make these experiments particularly exciting for undergraduate physics students. This research award supports undergraduate research both directly through research stipends and indirectly through bringing this exciting research project to a liberal arts college.
Anthony Aveni has co-edited another book that has been honored with two awards: The Madrid Codex: New Approaches to the Study of a Maya Document is to be published by University of Colorado. It's all about what's in one of the four ancient Maya books that survived the Spanish conquest - which is a lot of astronomy!
