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I recently returned from a refreshing and productive leave at the University of Oregon in Eugene.  I received my own Ph D in the field of quantum optics at Oregon, and my leave was a great opportunity to continue work with prior colleagues.  However, I am excited to be back and interacting daily with Wooster…

Congratulations class of 2018!  I’ve attached a few pictures of some of our seniors and professors who gathered for a quick photo on graduation day (pics courtesy of Zane Thornburg).  Special congratulations are in order for Avi Vajpeyi (far left in the second photo), who was selected to be one of the College’s commencement speakers…

I’m currently in Los Angeles for the American Physical Society March Meeting — the largest gathering of physicists in the world. This year there are almost 11,000 attendees, and more than 55 simultaneous sessions to choose from! There are physicists everywhere — hordes descending on the convention center at 8 am Monday to pick up…

Well, we’re so busy doing things here at Wooster Physics that we haven’t kept up the blogging about all our exciting activities. Case in point — CUWiP 2018! For the last several years, the American Physical Society has been hosting Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP). These are regional conferences around the US designed…

When we say that two particles are quantumly entangled, we mean that the particles cannot be looked at independently even when separated by great distances. This means that if we measure one particle, we will automatically get the measurements of the other. This concept is spooky, and can be useful in studying the nature of…

    Absorption spectroscopy is popular form of chemical identification and characterization. Typically, light is passed through a sample once and the intensity of the light after passing through the sample is measured. If light is absorbed by a sample, we expect the amount absorb to increase if the concentration of the solution or the…

My name is Collin Hendershot. For my Junior Independent Study project I observed the effect of concavity on the aerodynamics of high speed automobiles. The two important aerodynamic characteristics of automobiles are downforce and drag. Downforce is the force of air pushing a car toward the road and drag is the force on the car…

I have always thought that one of the most outdated technologies we currently employ in the large scale is propellers for ships. While this isn’t a critical fault in our world it does lead to a lot of inefficiencies. Modern trade ships and super-tankers use millions of tons of fuel annually. This does a great deal…

Solar sails utilize the change in momentum of photons as a means of propulsion. This allows spacecraft with solar sails to significantly reduce their mass, since they do not have to carry onboard fuel (in comparison to traditional rocket-based spacecraft). This project aims at designing a program to display the dynamics of a solar-sail-based spacecraft…