Events

Professor Uwe Korsthagen, University of Minnesota, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Ronald L. and Janet A. Christenson Chair in Renewable Energy, Mechanical Engineering is presenting.

Chemically reactive nonthermal plasmas at low pressure are an interesting medium for the growth of nanocrystals. Molecular precursors are dissociated by electron impact reactions and the resulting molecular fragments and radicals, many of them charged, nucleate to form clusters and nanocrystals. Energetic surface reactions heat these initial clusters to temperatures that exceed the gas temperature by hundreds of Kelvin. This enables plasmas to form crystalline nanoparticles even of materials with very high melting points.

In this presentation, we will discuss the plasma synthesis of silicon quantum dots with diameters on the order of ~3 nm for luminescent applications as well as the synthesis of larger silicon nanocrystals, 60-200 nm in diameter, that show interesting scattering behaviors.

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

Summer researchers presenting:

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend their final senior capstone presentations of the spring semester:

• Ezra Wolf: "Tools for Refining the Baryonic Tuller-Fisher Relation"
• Dengyu (Spud) Tu: "From Experiment to Theory: Time-Resolved Photoconductivity Measurements and 3D Approximation Methods to Investigate the Effect of Pump Beam Size on Photovoltaic Material Behavior"

All are welcome! 

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend a senior honors thesis presentation:

• Chloe Zheng: "Development of a Particle-in-Cell/Monte Carlo Simulation for Weakly Ionized Plasmas."

All are welcome!

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend a senior honors thesis presentation:

• David Geeganage: "Using Models of Cloud Formation to Address the RH Effect in Low Cost PM Sensors."

All are welcome!

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend a senior honors thesis presentation:

• Ross Ferguson: "Trinification with a Bi-Adjoint Higgs Field."

All are welcome!

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend a senior honors thesis presentation:

• Jackson Codd: "Extension of the LUX-ZEPLIN NR Background to 600 phd for Dark Matter Detection."

All are welcome!

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend a senior honors thesis presentation:

• Haoxuan Sun ► "Machine Learning Refinements to Metallicity-Dependent Isotopic Abundance."

All are welcome!

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend their senior capstone presentations:

Ezra Kline ► "Tools for Refining the Baryonic Tuller-Fisher Relation;"

Josh Marine ► "Deriving Stellar Mass Values for 82 SHIELD Galaxies using the

Spitzer Space Telescope."

All are welcome!

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend a senior honors thesis presentation:

Margaret Shepherd ► " SHIELD Galaxies with Offset Neutral Gas Distributions."

All are welcome!

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend a senior honors thesis presentation:

Temazulu Zulu ► "SARS-CoV-2 Quantum Sensor Using NV Centers in Nanodiamonds."

All are welcome!

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend the senior capstone presentations:

• Ross Relic: "Measuring the Pulse Length of a Femtosecond Laser Using Intensity Autocorrelation;"
• Lance Bartol: "Effectiveness of Different Materials as Catalysts for Alkaline Water Electrolysis."

All are welcome! 

Refreshments at 3 p.m. near the pendulum.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend their senior capstone presentations:

• Erin Leary: "The Future of Solar Energy: Perovskite Solar Cell Fabrication;"
• Bill Chen: "Adding Classical Novae abundance contribution to the Elemental Scaling Model."

All are welcome! 

Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics & Astronomy Department invites you to attend this week's senior capstone presentation: 

• Jon Kazor: "Solar Radio Bursts--Deployable Low-band Ionosphere and  Transients Experiment (DLITE) Arrays."
  
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Refreshments at 3 p.m.

The Physics and Astronomy Department invites you to attend the first of the senior capstone presentations during spring semester: 

• Paige Stevenson ► "Machine Learning Methods for Predicting 2D Material Properties;"
• Karlee Taylor ► "Hydrosphere: Modeling the Planetary Structure of Ocean Planets and Icy Moons."

Refreshments at 3 PM.

Hi, it's been a while since we've hosted an Observatory Public Night! But we're doing one last open night before the end of the semester and finals week.

Come by Thursday, December 8th 7-10 pm. We'll be in Olin Rice 404 as usual, which you can reach through the Southwest stairwell and elevator.

Be sure to dress warmly! See the observatory on the roof of Olin Rice and hear about astronomy and physics on campus. We hope to see you there!

Natalie Boehnke, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, will speak about "Power in Numbers: Developing Pooled Screening Tools to Study Drug Delivery." 

Prof. Natalie Boehnke received her B.S. in chemistry from Purdue University in 2012.  Natalie then obtained her Ph.D. in organic and polymer chemistry from UCLA in 2017, working with Prof. Heather Maynard on the synthesis and characterization of biodegradable hydrogels and nanogels. After graduation, Natalie joined Prof. Paula Hammond’s group at MIT to develop toolsets to integrate biology and engineering approaches for accelerated translation of self-assembled nanomaterials. Natalie has received a Department of Defense Horizon Award and NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award for her work. She joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in summer 2022, where her group uses high throughput screening and machine learning to understand how biological heterogeneity affects nanoparticle delivery and efficacy.

Interested in doing physics and astronomy research in summer 2023? Join us to learn about both on-campus and off-campus summer research opportunities.  We will discuss what options are available and the application procedures.

Find your ideal research project!

Pizza provided.  

The Physics and Astronomy Department invites you to attend senior capstone presentations: 

• Aurora Hiveley ► "Mapping the Tesseral Field of Saturn"
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  • Ryan Davies ► "A High-speed Portable Ground Heat Exchanger Model for use in Framework Development"

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  • All are welcome! 

    Refreshments at 3 PM. 
    

Four Physics & Astronomy alums will give an overview of their career paths since leaving Macalester and answer your questions about their choices.

William Setterberg, Mac 2020

Sarah Taft, Mac 2019

Dauda Mawanda, Mac 2006

Fitih Mohammed, Mac 2003

Paola Cappellaro, Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT, Quantum Engineering Group, will speak about "Practical Quantum Advantage in Sensing." 

"Quantum sensors exploit the strong sensitivity of quantum systems to external disturbances to measure various signals in their environment with high precision. Nitrogen Vacancy color centers in diamond have in particular emerged as exquisite probes of magnetic fields. These quantum sensors have the potential to be a revolutionary tool in material science, quantum information processing, and bioimaging. For example, they could be used to image single molecules, thus performing MRI at the nanoscale. However, the same strong coupling to the environment also limits their sensitivity due to its decohering effects. Error correction strategies, including  dynamical decoupling, can help in fighting decoherence, but they incur the risk of also canceling the coupling to the signal to be measured.

"Here I will show recent advances in tackling this challenge, including exploiting and improving control and the use of ancillary systems, that achieve an advantageous compromise between noise and signal cancellation. These strategies can not only improve the sensitivity of quantum sensors, but also yield new applications, via the transduction of biological signals of interest into quantum perturbations or the frequency up/down-conversion of signals of interest."

Refreshments at 3 PM. 

Come visit the Macalester Observatory tonight! 7-10 pm in Olin Rice 404, through the Southwest stairs.

It'll probably be cloudy, but it might clear up around 9:00 but you're still welcome to come by, hear about the observatory and astronomy on campus, and have a good time.

Hope to see you there!

Come by Olin Rice 404, through the Southwest stairs, 7:00 - 10:00 pm.

Right now, it's expected that there will be clear skies. Jupiter and Saturn will be visible again, and Mars might be sen low in the eastern sky. See the telescope and the astrolab and learn about physics and astronomy at Macalester.

We hope to see you there!

Hi, we're hosting another public observatory night tonight. Unfortunately, it looks like it'll be cloudy. You're still welcome to come by, get a tour of the astronomy lab, the observatory, and the function of the telescope. Find us in Olin Rice 404, through the Southwest stairwell and elevator, 7-10pm.

We hope to see you there, anyway!

Professor Evan Skillman, Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics, University of Minnesota, will share his experiences about "JWST and Me: An Early View of JWST Science."

The James Webb Space Telescope has been successfully launched and commissioned, and science observing started this past summer.  I will provide a very personal view of my experiences so far.  I am a member of one of 13 Early Release Science programs, which were prioritized in the first months of the telescope's operations.  I will highlight that program and give an insider's view of what has been happening. I will also be happy to answer questions about the JWST and its science mission, to the best of my ability.

Hello again! There is a Public Observatory Night tonight, 7-10 pm.

Olin Rice 404, reachable through the Southwest stairwell and elevator. Current prediction is clear skies for this entire session again!

Come by to hear about physics and astronomy and look through the telescope. We hope to see you there!

Summer Researchers presenting:

Uditi Chandrashekhar, "The Hodgkin-Huxley Model of Neuron Action Potentials;"

Ally Hurd, "Measuring Charge Lifetimes in Organic Solar Cells;"

Seth Buesing, "Trinification Symmetry Breaking with a Bi-Adjoint Higgs Field35;"

Sylvia Greene, "The dark matter search with XenonnT: Impurity measurements in liquid Xenon (IMix);"

Siri Erickson-Green, "Investigation of Tantalum Lead Borate Glass using LITOF-MS."

Refreshments at 3 PM. 

Hi all,

Maybe you're used to seeing this pop up, but we've got clear skies, a full moon, and a visible Jupiter and Saturn tonight.

Come by Olin Rice 404, reachable through the Southwest stairwell and elevator (by the Geese). We'll be open 7-10pm to tell you about Physics and Astronomy and show you the telescope and dome.

Hi all, if you've come already, thank you! We said a few times that we intended to be open nearly weekly and that we would move the day of the week around in order to meet the demands of more guests.

So, this week, we're open on Thursday! Unfortunately, we've been experiencing fall temperatures and now we are beginning to experience fall skies. That means this week is cloudy. Clouds are hard to predict three and a half days from now, but current expectation is spotty cloudy at best.

Regardless, we'll be up in Olin Rice 404 from 7-10pm to talk about physics and astronomy, space, and our observatory on campus. Reach 404 through the Southwest stairwell.

Jay Gallagher, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Macalester College and Emeritus Professor of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, will speak about "How Do Galaxies Control Their Growth?"

The visible components of galaxies grow as star formation converts gas into stars and a small percentage into black holes. In turn stars and central massive black holes feed mechanical energy into interstellar gas and the surroundings of galaxies thereby modifying conditions for future star formation. These galactic feedback processes, which also are affected by gas inflows, can control evolutionary rates in galaxies and therefore are central to the cycling of baryons through cosmic systems. This talk will review the observational evidence for the important role of feedback in the evolution of stellar bodies of galaxies and discuss why proper observational characterization of galaxy feedback remains an astrophysical challenge.

Refreshments at 3:00 PM

Physics & Astronomy Majors & Minors: Please join us for an informal session led by Dr. Ralf Kotulla (Research Scientist, University of Wisconsin-Madison) and our very own Dr. Jay Gallagher (Distinguished Visiting Professor). Dr. Ralf Kotulla is a Scientist in Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on data mining and analysis to address major problems in astrophysics ranging from stellar variability to galaxy evolution. He manages the Wisconsin NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) summer program. During the Thursday lunch Dr. Kotulla will discuss applying to REU programs and present some informal perspectives on data-intensive astronomy.

Pizza provided. 

Professor Joseph S. Francisco, University of Pennsylvania and 2022-23 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, Macalester College," will present "So Much Water in the Atmosphere."

Professor Joseph S. Francisco is Macalester College's Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2022-23.  He is currently the President's Distinguished Professor and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania.   His research laboratory uses laser spectroscopy and computation to study the properties and chemical reactions of unusual short-lived species in the earth's atmosphere.  His laboratory focuses on chemical reactivity both in the gas phase and at air-water interfaces.  For decades, Professor Francisco has been a leader in atmospheric chemistry research.  His scientific accomplishments were recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.  He has also been a leader in the broader scientific community, serving as President of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers from 2005 to 2007 and as President of the American Chemical Society in 2010.  

Join the Physics and Astronomy department in welcoming back Public Observatory Nights!

Learn about the physics and astronomy program here at Mac, learn about the astronomy lab and observatory, and (weather permitting!) take a look through the eyepiece of our 16 inch reflecting telescope!

Olin Rice 404 can be reached through the southwest stairwell and elevator.

Professor Jigang Wang, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Iowa State University and the Ames National Laboratory-U.S. DOE, will speak about "Quantum Coherence at Space-Frequency Limit."

The challenge of pushing the switching speed-limit and integration density of today’s logic and memory devices into the terahertz (THz, 1012 hertz) and sub-20 nanometer regime underlies the entire field of information processing, recording, storage and communication. We approach this challenge via developing an Extreme Quantum Terahertz nanoscope that operate at temperatures down to liquid helium temperature and high magnetic fields. The simultaneous space, energy and time visualization under these extreme conditions breaks new ground for coherent control of quantum matter.

Professor Marty Baylor, Carleton College will present "A Random Walk into Optical Signal Processing & Integrated Optofluidic Devices."

"Light not only has the power to help us learn about the physical world, but it can also help us solve problems that are hard to solve in other ways. I fell into optics through what felt like a winding path to me. As I share about my path from my childhood dreams of being a paleontologist to my current work using photopolymers for integrated optofluidic devices, I will periodically pause to describe the varied optics work I have done along the way at Kenyon College, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and CU Boulder. During this talk, I invite the audience to consider the role of power and privilege in helping me arrive at where I am today.

Alyssa Rauschenberger will present hers honors thesis, "Spectral Fitting Approach for Collective Thomson Scattering Experiments on an Extreme Ultraviolet Plasma Light Source." 

Refreshments at 3 p.m. in the OLRI atrium. Join us for a snack and the presentation! 

Henry Bell will present his honors thesis, "Custom Calibration and Correction of Photoemission Electron Microscope Images Using Graphine." 

Refreshments at 3 p.m. in the OLRI atrium. Join us for a snack and the presentation! 

Chinhsan Sieng will present his honors thesis, "Neutrino Oscillations in the Presence of a Magnetic Field." 

Refreshments at 3 p.m. in the OLRI atrium. Join us for a snack and the presentation! 

Carter J. Swift will present his Honors Thesis, "The Interaction of Topological Defects in Anisotropically-Elastic Nematic Liquid Crystals." 

Refreshments at 3 PM in the OLRI Atrium. Join us for a snack and the presentation! 

Susie Paine will present her Honors Thesis, "Hunting for Fast Radio Bursts from Messier 82: Exploring the FRB-Magnetar Connection."

Members of the community are welcome to attend!

Alex Li will give her Honors Thesis presentation on "Molecular Line Search in Archival ALMA Imaging of M87."   

Members of the community are welcome to attend!

The Physics and Astronomy Department invites you to attend senior capstone presentations: 

Lev Serxner ► "The Impact of Structure and Burn Abundances on Weak s-Process Modeling"

Joey Wehrley ► "Electrical Characterization of a PEM Electrolysis Cell"

All are welcome! 

The Physics and Astronomy Department invites you to attend senior capstone presentations: 

Jack Hempel Costello ► "Lie Algebra and the Poincare Group"

• A Ma ► "Finite-Difference-Time-Domain simulation on ultrafast experiments"
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All are welcome! 

The Physics and Astronomy Department invites you to attend senior capstone presentations: 

• Jason Beal ► "Knocking Down NOx: Examining the Impact of Transportation Electrification on Urban Ozone Production"
• Damen Beverlin ► "Simulating Interactions Between Coronal Mass Ejections"

All are welcome! 

The Physics and Astronomy Department invites you to attend the Senior Capstone presentations this spring starting with: 

All  are welcome!