Saturday, January 29th, Photon attended a tour of medical physics at Massachusetts General Hospital. This tour was hosted by Dr. George Chen. He showed Photon members the Proton Center and the linear accelerator the cyclotron. He gave a talk about radiation oncology and its applications in treating cancer. For more information, please visit their site: http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/radiationoncology/BurrProtonCenter.aspx.
On November 5th, we listened to talks given by some of the members of Photon on their research.
During this school year, we had many interesting research talks given my Boston University physics professors, graduate students and even undergrads. Here is a list of the talks that were given and their topic:
Prof. Sidney Redner: What is physics? Gave an overview of the different areas of physics. He discussed the different parts of the Physical Review letters and used the different ones to discuss what is included in physics from partical physics to solid state physics.
Prof. Robert Carey: Muon research
Prof Hughes: Solar Weather
Prof Janes: Exoplanets
Prof Brainard: Cosmology and Dark Matter
Hidefumi Tomida: Detector Development for Dark Matter
Ryan Eriksen: Research studying part of the solid oxide fuel cell developed at BU. Fuel cells are usually studied as a whole, but his project specialized in examining the diffusion of hydrogen through just the anode of the fuel cell This allows for a more accurate measurement in order to better optimize the cell.
Jessica Leach: Polymers, specifically polystyrene, and searching for the glass transition temperature in a slip system created by having a brush layer below the film being measured. This system is relatively new and unstudied, thus offering new information.
The Pumpkin drop is an even held every year by BU’s Physics department. The experiment collides pumpkins of varying size and content with the earth. Last year, they were looking for the Higgs Boson, this year the target was the magnetic monopole. This year included a costume contest, and of course the chairmen Claudio Rebbi in his famous Friday best.
Some pictures of this event are available here.
Fusion technology has great potential for the energy generation. It also makes for a really fun physics tour. The tokamak reactor at MIT is one of the leading fusion test reactors in the world and Zach, our tour guide and BU alum, gave us a tour! Zach started with a presentation and introduction of fusion, followed by a tour of the operations center, and ending with a tour of the actual reactor. This is applied research at its finest!
A few pictures of this event are available here.
Last Saturday was the first annual SPS Boston area picnic! Northeastern hosted about 20 BU and UMass Lowell students along with another 20 NU students. The event was the first of hopefully many such group gatherings and was a big success. We had burritos along with a plethora of desserts and finger foods. the ballistic trajectory of a spinning disc (frisbee), the construction of a human pyramid, red-rover, and juggling.
Hey all! We just posted the schedule of events and some biographies of our two featured speakers for our SPS Meeting. These, like previous documents are available in pdf form. If anyone is having trouble viewing these files post a comment. We will accommodate your document viewing needs.
Hey all! We now have an snazzy new photo gallery. Check it out on the Pictures page.
Hey all, we’ve done yet another overhaul of our website. This site now uses Wordpress, a wonderful open source project that adds awesome new features. For example, you can now post comments on various parts of the website. New content will be appearing frequently over the coming weeks as we complete the transition to this new site. For now, feel free to explore and comment on what you think.
