Physics Department

The Physics Department and the Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences are pleased to present Harry Swinney of the University of Texas at Austin as the Divisional Speaker for 2015. Prof. Swinney's talk on "Emergence of Ordered Patterns in Physical, Chemical, and Biological Systems" will take place at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, February 24th in Vollum lecture hall.  It is free and open to the public.

Prof. Swinney is one of the pioneering figures in the study of chaos.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.  His work has been recognized with a variety of awards including the American Physical Society's Fluid Dynamics Prize, the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Moser Lecture Prize, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal of the European Geophysical Union, and the Boltzmann Medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

Huy Nguyen ('14) has been selected by the American Physical Society as a finalist for the 2014 Leroy Apker Award.  The Apker Award recognizes outstading achievement by undergraduate students in physics. Huy was chosen as a finalist based on the original research presented in his Reed College senior thesis: Quantum Monte Carlo calculation of the imaginary-time Green’s function in the Hubbard model.

Each of the finalists receives an honorarium of $2000 and travels to DC to present their research to a committee that will select the recipient of that year's award. Join us in congratulating Huy and wishing him success during his interview!

The Reed College physics department is thrilled to announce that three new faculty members will be joining us for the 2014-2015 academic year. They are astrophysicist Alison Crocker, Daniel Borrero who does experimental nonlinear dynamics, and theoretical particle physicist Brooks Thomas.

The physics department welcomes Owen Gross ('04) back to Reed as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the department.  Owen completed his BA in physics at Reed College, his MS in physics at UC Davis, and his PhD in neuroscience at UC Davis; this spring, he will teach electrodynamics as well as laboratory for the modern physics course and conference for the introductory physics course.

The Physics Department is pleased to announce that Jay Ewing has been hired as the new Machine Shop Supervisor, taking over from Greg Eibel who retired last year. Jay will be transitioning from his current role as Departmental Associate to the new position over the course of the fall 2013 term.

Professor David Latimer (currently at the University of Puget Sound) and Margaret Millhouse '12 have published a paper on neutron tomography in the September 2013 issue of the American Journal of Physics. The paper is based on Margaret's senior thesis.

Professor David Latimer and recent graduate Teddy Hay '11 have published a paper entitled Implications of the Dirac CP phase upon parametric resonance for sub-GeV neutrinos in issue 3 of Physical Review C. The paper is based on Teddy's thesis.

We thank David Latimer for his extraordinary service to Reed's physics department and wish him the best in his new position at the University of Puget Sound.

We would like to welcome Kathrine Jones-Smith who will be joining our department as a Visiting Assistant Professor.

Rachel Fordyce's 2009 thesis project on a chaotic water wheel and the improvements on the setup made by Alison Saunders during the 2010 summer resulted in two articles, both co-authored by Professor Lucas Illing and published in March 2012, one appearing in the American Journal of Physics the other in Chaos.

Professor Lucas Illing together with graduates Greg Hoth '10 and Chris May `08 have published a paper entitled Scaling behavior of oscillations arising in delay-coupled optoelectronic oscillators in the February 2011 issue of Physical Review E. The paper is based on Greg's senior thesis and an experimental setup pioneered by Chris. A second Physical Review E paper, coauthored by Cris Panda '12, was published in the July 2011 issue. It is entitled Isochronal chaos synchronization of delay-coupled optoelectronic oscillators and presents the results of Cris's 2010 summer research.

Professor Joel Franklin and recent graduate Todd Garon '11 have published a paper entitled Approximate Born-Infeld effects on the relativistic hydrogen spectrum in the March 2011 issue of Physics Letters A. The paper is based on work that Todd and Joel completed over the previous summer.

Professor Darrell Schroeter has been chosen as a Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) Scholar for 2011-2013.  The award provides funding for visits to the institute in Santa Barbara. The KITP is a world-renowned research institute that brings theoretical physicists together for extended periods of time to work on a broad range of problems.

Professor Joel Franklin and recent graduate Frank Morton-Park `10 have published a paper entitled Charged radial infall for spherical central bodies in the December 2010 issue of the American Journal of Physics. The paper is based on work that Frank did as part of his senior thesis.

The Reed College Physics Department has a collaboration with Pomona College and New Mexico Skies observatory which affords Reed thesis students and PHY 332 students the possibility of remote observation while funding persists. The telescope is a well maintained 14 inch Cassegranian reflector at about 7300 feet in the mountains of southern New Mexico. The seeing in Mayhill, New Mexico is outstanding and several huge astronomical facilities are nearby. More information can be found at the website for New Mexico Skies and at the website of Professor Bryan Penprase at Pomona.