The Physics Department invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position, with teaching duties starting September 2020. We seek an energetic individual eager to teach throughout the undergraduate curriculum and to involve undergraduates in research with a theoretical or computational focus. For more information, click here. Continue reading »
Nine physics majors received their Williams diplomas on June 3, 2018. All of the physics departments in the United States, including those at large universities, awarded an average of 9.7 bachelor’s degrees per department; for four-year institutions the average was 6.1 (see here). Our relatively large number… Continue reading »
Fourteen physics majors and three astrophysics majors received their Williams diplomas on June 4, 2017. All of the physics departments in the United States, including those at large universities, awarded an average of 10.8 bachelor’s degrees per department in 2015,* the most recent year for which data is… Continue reading »
The American Physical Society selected Ben Augenbraun ’15 as winner of the 2015 LeRoy Apker Award. This national award is the highest honor for physics research by an undergraduate student in the United States. Only two winners are chosen each year. Ben worked with Prof. Tiku Majumder at Williams… Continue reading »
The National Institutes of Health has awarded Williams College physics professor Daniel Aalberts a three-year, $255,304 grant to study how to obtain sufficient yields of proteins. “Understanding the 3D structure of the protein a gene encodes can help biologists understand its function,” explains Aalberts, whose research focuses on the physics… Continue reading »
Purpose To illustrate some basic properties of sound waves; namely, that they don’t propagate in a vacuum. Parts Glass vacuum cover with bell assembly(shelf D4 or D1) Vacuum pump base plate (shelf D1) Vacuum pump (between shelves C and D) Power source? (shelf ?)… Continue reading »
“Stay on Target! The origins of persistence in amoeboid society” Directed motion enables neutrophils (white blood cells) to hunt invaders, neural axons to find their targets, and embryonic cells to properly develop into a complete organism. Amoeboid motility has an underlying directional persistence – even in the absence of external signals – which helps… Continue reading »
Pencil + Tape = Topological Quantum Computation? — The New Two-Dimensional Universe of Graphene From its isolation in 2004 to the 2010 Nobel Prize, the impressive material properties of graphene have been widely touted: it’s a single atom thick, stronger than steel, a better conductor than… Continue reading »
“The Importance of Being Duplicitous: Why Binarity Matters” In spite of the depiction of Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine as orbiting two suns, astronomers have long assumed that such systems would be difficult if not impossible to form and remain stable. As a result, early radial velocity… Continue reading »
Using Social Network Data to Understand Human Behavior As a growing fraction of our lives is conducted online, we create ever richer trails of digital breadcrumbs for learning about statistical human behavior. By analyzing different online social networks and citation patterns in papers using the techniques of statistical physics, we… Continue reading »
Complexity, Computation and Science in the 21st Century In 1969 Thomas Schelling published a model of racial segregation based on simple agents moving around a 2-dimensional grid. This work was one of the first examples of what we now call Complexity Science, an interdisciplinary field that includes elements of physics, mathematics,… Continue reading »
Friday, November 9 Noon – 1:00 PM: Meet and greet, Science Court. Light sandwiches and refreshments will be provided. 1:00 – 5:30 PM: APS-AAPT Invited Talks: Wege Auditorium (TCL123) 1:00 – 3:00 PM: Quantum Information Paola Cappellaro (MIT): “Building blocks for a scalable quantum… Continue reading »
Digital Media Supporting Physics Teaching and Learning Leave with a suite of free high quality, content rich and high interest digital media resources to engage and prepare physics students. Bring your laptop. Participants in this hands-on workshop will learn to utilize digital media from NSF 360, NOVA Spark,… Continue reading »
Nanoscale Science and Engineering in High School Physics Integrating Nanoscale Science and Engineering into high school physics is often perceived as a daunting addition to the curriculum rather than as an opportunity for students to apply their understanding of fundamental physical principles and to further develop… Continue reading »
iphone and iPad App Development This workshop is a basic introduction to creating apps for the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad. No prior knowledge is assumed. We will cover the basics of drawing and animating; learn a little Objective-C; become familiar with the XCode… Continue reading »
What do the Students Need? The instruction we offer students, at any level, presumably reflects what we believe will help them understand physics. But we don’t often subject our beliefs to scrutiny. Most physics instructors work from common sense assumptions about what students need—clear explanations,… Continue reading »
Inertial Navigation with Cold Atom Interferometry Abstract: Atom interferometric sensors exploit the wave nature of matter to make highly accurate measurements of inertial forces. Following major developments in the laser cooling of atoms and in atom interferometry, existing laboratory sensors compete with or surpass the accuracy of state of the… Continue reading »
Integrating the multifunction necessary for electrochemical power into energy- and size-scalable ultraporous nanoarchitectures Debra R. Rolison 1Surface Chemistry Branch, Code 6170, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375 Designing high-performance energy-storage devices that combine nanometric feature size with well-wired transport paths and that bridge to the macroscale… Continue reading »
Exciting Physics with Excited Atoms Physics and Astronomy Combined Colloquium Friday, April 13th, 2012 … Continue reading »
Electrostatics Meets Entropy Physics and Astronomy Colloquium Friday, November 4, 2011 2:30 pm Thompson Physical Laboratory 205… Continue reading »