Luke helped construct a macrosopic model of an experiment involving magnetic fields with Dr. Andrew Kunz. The final product will be a total of 500 magnets positioned in a square meter. The magnets are placed on a pin attached to a small platform, and can freely rotate about the pin to change direction, depending on the direction of adjacent magnetic fields. The magnets are placed in such a way that by changing the direction of one magnet, the rest of the magnets also reverse direction, in a domino-effect. Their goal is to better understand these patterns of movement and how data could be transferred and stored in devices such as a hard drive.
In the Summer of 2013 at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Kelsey worked with Dr. Joachim Mueller of the Biophysics group. He works with optical systems to image small biological systems. The graduate students in the lab bound fluorescent proteins to different parts of cells, and then took pictures of the light coming off these cells in order to better understand their structure. The graduate student that Kelsey worked with was trying to start a new set-up that will hopefully allow for better resolution, to be able to look at objects which are significantly smaller than cells. The end goal of this project would be to use this technology to view small biological objects such as viruses.
The goal of Mike's work over the summer of 2013 was to complete the positron collector for use in an experiment on observing the bandwidth of the annihilation spectrum of positrons in atomic hydrogen. Positrons are the antimatter electrons formed in the beta decay of unstable isotopes. This data will be compared to that of data being collected by a satellite which is registering gamma rays in the energy range that is thought to be that of atomic hydrogen and positrons annihilating. This would provide experimental data supporting this theory.
Senior physics major Jesse Vogeler-Wunsch and junior majors Demetri Kutzke and Henry Le participated in an NSF-funded project to investigate the motion of domain walls in ferromagnetic nanowires with Dr. Andrew Kunz. The research could lead to revolutionary magnetic recording devices that would be able to store more data, read and write information much more quickly, and consume less power. The group submitted a paper on their work to the Journal of Applied Physics. Dr. Kunz also secured a new grant, allowing him to continue this research with undergraduate students.
Cece worked with Dr. Ben Brown toward the goal of writing and publishing two papers this year. She began exploring the possibility of a statistically significant correlation between the introductory physics textbook "The Six Ideas that Shaped Physics" by Tom Moore, and an increase in the number and quality of physics majors nationwide. Secondly, she researched differences in test scores between American and international students who take the Physics GRE Subject Test, and hoped to also compare gender difference.
