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News & events

Annual Department Events

There are a few regular events in the department that happen each year:

  • Presentation of the Major

Join us for the presentation of the physics major each fall and spring.

Fall 2009: Monday, October 26, 2009 from noon-1 p.m.
McConnell Lobby

Spring 2010: Monday, March 22, 2010, from noon-1 p.m.
McConnell Lobby

  • "Science at the Center"

Wednesdays from 12:50 to 1 p.m. in McConnell Hall

"Science at the Center" is a weekly event organized to highlight science and the science being conducted at the science center by the faculty. Once a week, at a well-chosen time, and at a place that gets a high traffic of students, a short 10-minute presentation by a faculty on a topic will take place. It will be an informal presentation of an idea and/or a demonstration on a topic of interest to the speaker. People would just gather around for a few minutes on their way to classes and listen to the speaker. The idea is to bring people together on a science topic and give the students a peek into the "science at the center."

September 16
"What is the Universe Made of?"
Gary Felder, Department of Physics
The things we are familiar with, atoms and the particles that make them up, account for less than 5% of what's out there in the universe. We know that the rest is made up of two mysterious substances called "dark matter" and "dark energy," but we don't know what they actually are. I'll briefly describe what we do and don't know about the stuff that makes up 95% of the universe we live in.

September 23
"The day the Earth froze over: New observations on Snowball Earth from Northern Namibia"
Sara Pruss, Department of Geology
The theory of Snowball Earth postulates that the Earth was completely entombed in ice around 700 million years ago. As a geologist who is interested in Snowball Earth, I visited Namibia (southern Africa) this past summer to study ancient sediments left behind from these massive glaciers that covered all of the oceans and continents. Please stop by Clark Corner to hear about geological field work in remote parts of Africa and how we geologists study rocks to learn about a prehistoric frozen World!

September 30
Thunder Demonstration

October 7
"After the Dark Ages: Viewing the Earliest Stars in the Universe"
James Lowenthal, Department of Astronomy
Astronomers look far away to look back in time, thanks to the finite speed of light. New telescopes now nearing completion will allow us to witness the formation of the first stars and galaxies, following a period of rapid but relatively dark expansion of the Universe less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

October 14
"Nucleon: What Is It Made Of?"
Piotr Decowski, Department of Physics
Despite common anticipation that the nucleon is made of three quarks, its structure is much more complex with dominant features determined by properties of vacuum.

October 21
"Boy's Surface"
Pau Atela, Mathematics Department
The talk is about the steel object that was constructed in 1999-2000 that is now hanging in the stairwell connecting Burton Hall and Sabin Reed (3rd floor). It is a rendering of Boy's Surface. Pau will talk about its history, the context in which it was discovered and its relevance in geometry and topology.

October 28
"H1N1 influenza– Why the Big Concern?"
Christine White-Ziegler, Department of Biology
Public health care officials are anticipating that 50 percent of the population may contract the H1N1 influenza virus this upcoming flu season. How is the H1N1 influenza different from seasonal flu? Learn about the biology of this virus and how it impacts the public health care strategies to protect those most at risk.

November 4
"What is Bio-Geometric Computing?"
Ileana Streinu, Computer Science Department
Techniques from Computational Geometry, Robotics, Algorithms and other areas of computer science are being applied to understanding important questions in molecular biology, related to protein structure and function.

November 11
"Water and Climate: Field Investigations at the MacLeish Field Station"
Andrew Guswa, Department of Engineering
Smith College recently established the Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station, a 200-acre parcel located amid a patchwork of protected land and farmland making up one of the largest tracks of undeveloped land in the state. This site and the associated infrastructure provide a platform for faculty and student research.

November 18
"The cheapest instrument ever: A drop of water"
Kate Queeney, Department of Chemistry
Layers a molecule (or an atom) thick can change a surface from hydrophilic—water spreads out to form a sheet on it—to hydrophobic—water beads up in nearly spherical droplets. We'll look at some surfaces that look to the eye to be identical—shiny gray pieces of silicon. Then will dunk them in water to see what happens.

  • Physics Open Houses

Fall Fest

During orientation week, we have an open house with all of our fun demos for entering students and anyone else who is on campus at that time.

Photo gallery of the 2009 Physics Fest >

May Open House

During graduation week, we have a display of demos and toys for our graduating seniors and their families. Alumnae who are on campus for their reunions also come by to meet the department.

Photo gallery of the 2009 Open House >

Physics Tea in April

This tea is for admitted students who visit Smith during open campus.

Physics-Related Events

"Exploring the Early Universe with Gamma Ray Bursts" and "What is it like to go to graduate school in astronomy after Smith College?"
Monday, November 16, 2009, at 4 p.m.
McConnell 404
A talk by Adria Updike '03 will be followed by a reception so students have a chance to meet her. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. in astronomy at Clemson University.

Abstract: "Long gamma ray bursts result from the collapse of massive stars, often from the early universe. They include the oldest objects ever detected and offer us a brief but unique opportunity to study the first stars and galaxies. I will discuss the history of gamma ray bursts, how we observe them, and what they might be able to tell us about dust in early galaxies."

Fall 2009 Research Talks

A series of research talks by faculty in the Five Colleges are invited to speak at Smith. These talks are organized by the students in the PHY300 current topics class.

Talk by John Tobiason
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
A talk by John Tobiason, engineering at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Talk by Molly Mulligan
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A talk by Smith alum and graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Abstract: "There are a wide range of applications for emulsions with precisely controlled droplets of one fluid in a second immiscible fluid, including personal care products, foods and products for drug delivery. Nearly monodisperse drops were generated using a microfluidic hydrodynamic flow-focusing device. Once formed, the drops were driven through a hyperbolic contraction which deformed the drops. The hyperbolic contraction produces a homogeneous extensional flow, meaning that the extensional forces acting on the droplet are constant through the entire contraction.

"New Ideas for Teaching Relativity"
Tuesday, November 3, 2009, at 5 p.m.
McConnell Hall
Talk by Rob Salgado, Mount Holyoke College. "We present two new ideas for teaching Relativity (Einstein, 1905) to an audience with little mathematical background. Both use Spacetime Diagrams (Minkowski, 1908), which are essentially position-vs.-time graphs. The first idea develops a new animated visualization of an observer's proper-time ("wristwatch time") using "Circular Light Clocks." The resulting diagram visualizes the ticks of each clock. The second idea presents "Spacetime Trigonometry," a unified formalism for two-dimensional Euclidean space, Galilean spacetime, and Minkowski spacetime. This approach is being developed to help flatten the learning curve from introductory Galilean physics to advanced presentations of Einsteinian general relativity."

The first idea is described here, with videos here.

Five College Student Physics Symposium
Friday, October 23, 2009, from 2:30-6 p.m.
McConnell 103 Auditorium

View a photo gallery of the 2009 Physics Fest >

"Black Holes in Higher Dimensions"
Tuesday, October 6, 2009, at 5 p.m.
McConnell Hall
Talk by Professor David Kastor from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Theories of fundamental physics, such as string theory, suggest that our universe may have more than the four spacetime dimensions we are familiar with. Black holes, as purely gravitational objects, play an important role in fundamental physics. The important features of four dimensional black holes were worked out in the 1970s. Recent work has shown that, while some properties of higher dimensional black holes are familiar, there is a rich array of new and intriguing phenomena as well.

"Bose, Einstein, and the Coldest Stuff in the Universe"
Tuesday, September 29, 2009, at 5 p.m. (4:45 refreshments)
David Hall 103, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Building upon work by Bose, Einstein predicted in 1925 that an atomic gas, cooled to sufficiently low temperature, would undergo a phase transition in which the atoms would "pile up" in a single quantum state. Seventy years passed before refrigeration technology caught up with Einstein's theoretical vision and produced the first atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, as this macroscopically-occupied quantum state is known. Since the condensate is composed of many particles there is an effective "amplification" of the behavior of single atoms, thereby opening a unique window into the quantum world. The atoms also exhibit stunning forms of collective behavior, such as matter-wave interference and superfluidity. In this brief tour of the field, I will focus on experimental studies performed with multiple Bose Einstein condensates, with an emphasis on recent experimental results from my laboratory.