November/December 2010
Volume 5, Issue 2
Physics Newsletter
Department of Physics, Baylor University
Special points of interest:

Distinguished Speakers
Highlight Fall Colloquia

Physics takes part in
Special Events on Campus

Graduate Student News

End of Semester Deadlines

… and much, much more!
Inside this issue:
Profile: Mark Reeves, III
2—3
Distinguished Speakers
4
Special Events
5
News and Notes
6
Graduate Curriculum
6
Out and About …
7
Calendars
8
Department Receives Alumni Updates from Newsletter
One of the true joys of working on the newsletter, particularly the
Annual Newsletter, is the opportunity to hear from our alumni via the
feedback form (printed and ready for a stamp) that can be removed
from the Annual Newsletter and dropped in the mail. Through the
feedback we obtain from our alumni, we are better able to mentor our
current students to tell them of the varied careers that can be pursued with a degree in physics (and now, astronomy, too!)
This month, we have heard from several of our alumni, and are able to
share in their joys and sorrows. We heard from Linda Storm, widow
of Baylor University Alumnus Charles Stephen Storm who died on
August 15, 2008 after a 37 year career as a physics teacher for students in high school and college. In addition, Karl Glastad, who received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Physics in 1981, wrote to tell
us not only of his current position as the Medical Director of MRI at
Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, but also of his family including his wife Allison, and four children: Karl Michael, Kristin, Jacob,
and Luke. Please keep sending in those feedback forms!
Our interest in our students
does not end with their
graduation.
Alumnus has storied career with his physics degree
We were also saddened to hear of the passing of Mark Reeves, III from Katy, Texas. Mark had an extensive career in theoretical physics and scientific programming that began with his undergraduate degree at Baylor. Our condolences go to his wife, Mittie E. Wisenbaker Reeves, who also graduated from
Baylor University in 1962. On pages 2 & 3 of the newsletter, we would like to share with you the stories
that Mittie shared with us, not only so we can celebrate his life and career with the Reeves family, but
also so our students can see the sort of impact that can result from a degree in physics.
Physics Newsletter
Mark Reeves, III
Page 2
February 25, 1938 - March 11, 2010
Mark Reeves, III passed away on Thursday, March 11, 2010 in Katy, Texas,
at the age of 72 years. Mark Reeves, III was born on February 25, 1938 in
El Paso, Texas the son of a Baptist minister Mark Reeves, Jr. and his wife
Elizabeth Bardin Wagnon Reeves. Consistent with his father's career path,
Mark received his early education in a variety of locations in Texas and
Louisiana. At Coahoma High, in Coahoma, Texas, Mark participated in all
sports, receiving two all-district and two all-area awards in football and
winning a district singles championship in tennis. He also began to distinguish himself scholastically, making all A's for three straight years and
graduating second in his high school class.
Mark's first love was always applied mathematics. He received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science cum
laude at Baylor University and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics at the University of Tennessee in 1970. While attending Baylor, Mark met Mittie Elsie Wisenbaker and proposed to her on their third date. On January 26, 1961, he and Mittie
were married in the First Baptist Church, in Humble, Texas.
Dr. Reeves was an expert mathematical modeler with over 30 years of experience in the ground-water area. From a
background of theoretical physics and scientific programming, he moved into the then new field of environmental
modeling in the late 1960s. He focused on waste-management problems in partially saturated, saturated, and multiphased flow systems, and has written several well-known computer models in these areas. He led and participated in
numerous projects with activities relating to high- and low-level nuclear-waste disposal, Class-I hazardous waste disposal, in situ mining, and other subjects. Sites considered include the DOE Oak Ridge Reservation in eastern Tennessee, the WIPP Site in southeastern New Mexico, the Yucca Mountain Site near Las Vegas, Nevada, and approximately
one-third of all Class-I hazardous waste-injection plants in the United States.
Dr. Reeves began his career as an Instructor of Physics at Baylor University in Waco from 1962 to 1964. From 1965 to
1968, he was a Doctoral Fellow at the University of Tennessee. He then became a Staff Scientist from 1968 to 1978 at
the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he considered a variety of near-surface, low-level
radioactive-waste problems related to the nuclear burial grounds. In 1978, he began a 22 year career when he joined
INTERA Environmental Sciences, Inc., where he achieved the highest technical position as a Group Fellow. In 1995, INTERA Environmental Sciences, Inc. merged with Duke Engineering & Services, Inc. (DE&S), where he served as a Consulting Scientist, also the highest technical position at DE&S.
While working at INTERA, Inc. Dr. Reeves worked on the Sandia NRC Project, where he considered radioactive releases
resulting from various scenarios for a high-level nuclear-waste repository in bedded salt. While working at the Office of
Nuclear Waste Isolation, he assessed risk and considered total-system modeling of the now-abandoned Deaf-Smith site
in north Texas. He led the project to adapt SWIFT-II for use in the Canadian nuclear-waste program and characterized
ground-water circulation at one Canadian site while working on the Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. He also led the project to adapt SWIFT-II for use in the West German nuclear-waste program at the Technical University of Berlin. Then in
1987, while working at the Sandia WIPP Project, he was first to employ a fractured-flow model to characterize
transport in the Culebra aquifer and considered the possible effects of pressurized brine release
(continued on page 3)
Physics Newsletter
Mark Reeves, III
Page 3
February 25, 1938 - March 11, 2010
(continued)
into the Culebra in the 1989 safety-analysis report. Dr. Reeves also led the INTERA team in Deep-Well-Injection in the
petition modeling for approximately one-third of the Class-I hazardous-waste injection sites in the United States.
Later, while working on the Yucca Mountain Study, he along with fellow scientists reviewed and compared all modeling
codes (approximately 20) used by various organizations in-the Yucca Mountain Project to simulate partially saturated,
multiphase, and non-isothermal flow, and recommended those to be carried forward with further development. In
support of INTERA's total system's performance assessment of the site, he performed partially saturated flowcalculations using Los Alamos National Laboratory’s TRACR3D and two-phase, non-isothermal calculations using Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's (LBL's) TOUGH2 model. He also used the LBL's TOUGH2 code at the Sandia WIPP Project to
characterize the flow of liquid and gas within various seal components of the full shaft for the first 200 years following
repository closure. Another area of accomplishment was in the area of air quality and reactor licensing. In support of
the Oak Ridge National laboratory's assessment of various reactor sites in the United States, he led the modeling of
atmospheric transport of radioactive contaminants at several sites using a model he developed.
During his career, Dr. Reeves developed software for Mathematical Modeling of Ground-Water Systems for the safe
burial of nuclear waste. While working at the Computer Sciences Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he jointly
with fellow scientists developed the FEMWATER and FEMWASTE, two well-known models which consider contamination problems in partially saturated, near surface media. While working on the Sandia WIPP Project at INTERA, Inc. he
joined a fellow scientist in extending the adjoint-sensitivity code GRASP-II to include automatic calibration of flow
fields. Also while at INTERA, working on the Sandia NRC Project, he led the development of SWIFT-II, a widely used
model which considers contamination problems in fully saturated, fractured, and non-isothermal geologic media.
While working in the Computer Sciences Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Reeves also developed an atmospheric-transport model which combined the effects of radioactive decay and production with atmospheric dispersion. He also developed a nuclear/atomic scattering model to consider the quantum mechanical effects of virtual target
excitations on elastic scattering while working in the Physics Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
He decided to slow down a bit and retired in March, 2000, but found he could not remain idle far long. So, in 2002 he
began a new career path of educating home school and college students in physics, math, and computer programming
as a quest for intellectual stimulus and the satisfaction of seeing students succeed. He became interested and deeply
involved in teaching his home school students and several of these students went on to prestigious universities, such
as the University of Texas, MIT, and Harvard. Dr. Reeves taught at Logos Preparatory Academy in Sugar Land, Texas;
was an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at Alvin Community College in Alvin, Texas; and an Adjunct Professor of
Physics at both the Houston Community College System Northwest College and at Lone Star College in Houston.
Dr. Reeves authored and coauthored approximately 50 publications, papers, and reports on mathematical modeling of
ground water systems. He lived in the Katy area from 1978 to 1985, but moved his family to Austin in 1985 when INTERA, Inc. moved their operations. He moved back to the Katy area when he retired in 2000. He was a member of First
Baptist Church, Katy, where he was actively involved in the choir and Sunday School. Mark was a beloved husband,
father, and grandfather. He steadfastly loved his family very much and had a wonderful sense of humor. Mark was admired and cherished and will, be deeply missed by a family who often sought his unfaltering wisdom and guidance. He
is survived by his wife of 49 years, Mittie E. Reeves of Katy; his daughter, Betty June Reeves of Houston; his son, Mark
Reeves, IV and wife Stephanie of Katy; grandchildren, Rebecca Reeves, Katherine Reeves, Margaret Reeves; and, his
mother, Elizabeth Reeves of Katy; as well as other loving family members and friends.
Physics Newsletter
Page 4
Prestigious Speakers Highlight Special Fall Talks …
As a special event for Alumni weekend, Baylor University and the Physics Department welcomed Denis
Alexander, director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St. Edmunds College, Cambridge
to campus. On Thursday, October 21st, Dr. Alexander
presented the 3:30 pm Physics Colloquium “Is there
an Anthropic Principle in Biology?” (preceded at 3:00
p.m. by a reception in the Physics Conference Room.)
This was followed at 7 pm by Dr. Alexander’s public
lecture entitled “The Dawkins Delusion: Debunking
the Conflict between Science and Religion.”
Prior to his arrival at the Faraday Institute, Dr. Alexander was an open scholar at Oxford University where he
read biochemistry before carrying out research for a Ph.D. in neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry,
University of London. He then spent fifteen years in academic positions in the Middle East, the last as associate professor of biochemistry at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon (1981-1986). Upon his return to
the United Kingdom, he worked at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK), and since
1989 at The Babraham Institute where he was chair of the molecular immunology program and head of the
Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development.
Additional sponsors of Dr. Alexander's visit were the Templeton Foundation-funded Baylor Society for Conversations in Religion, Ethics, and Science (of which Dr. Gerald Cleaver is co-director), the Institute for Faith
and Learning, the Baylor chapter of the American Scientific Affiliation, and the Office of the Vice-Provost for
Research.
The following is a reprint of a Baylor News Story by Alison Higgins, Baylor student news writer.
Baylor University physics department celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the laser with a lecture and colloquium series with Dr. John E. Thomas, the Fritz London Professor in the department of physics at Duke University, at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 5, and at 4 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 6, in the Baylor Sciences Building (BSB) on
the Baylor campus.
Thomas's public physics lecture on Oct. 5 was held in room B.110 of the BSB. He spoke about "Bowls Made of
Laser Light to Corral Ultracold Atoms" and described how ultracold atomic gas now tests predictions in nearly
all fields of physics, from high temperature superconductors to neutron stars to the quark-gluon plasma of
the Big Bang and even string theory.
The physics colloquium on Oct. 6 was held in room
E.125 of the BSB where he discussed "Search for Perfect Fluidity in a Strongly Interacting Fermi Gas."
Thomas' lectures and the upcoming visit from Dr. Carlos Stroud, professor of optical physics at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y., have been organized by Dr. Linda Olafsen, professor of physics at
Baylor, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the laser.
Physics Newsletter
Page 5
Events of Note …
This fall, from September 24 to November 27, Baylor welcomes Prof. Stanislaw Jadach as a guest in its Precision High Energy Theoretical Physics Laboratory in his collaboration with B.F.L. Ward on the theory of higher order radiative corrections for precision QCD for the
physics objectives of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC, located at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, is currently running at the world
leading 7 TeV center of momentum energy for hadron-hadron colliding beam devices. Dr. Jadach presented a lecture on October 25 entitled
"Collinear Factorization in QCD for Pedestrians and Not Only" in the Baylor Particle Physics Seminar Series. His outstanding research on the
theory of EW radiative corrections was awarded the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Scientific Award in 2003 by the Polish Academy of Sciences for
the top physics research program in Poland. His presence emphasizes Baylor's connection to the mainstream conversations in physics. As B.F.L. Ward will be on research leave at CERN in its TH Unit from December 6, 2010 to August 19, 2011, he and Dr. Jadach will be able to
continue at CERN the developments which they are starting at Baylor this fall for new directions in the theory of higher order QCD
X EW radiative corrections for LHC precision physics realized by MC event generator methods on an event-by-event basis. We note that the
expenses for B.F.L. Ward's stay at CERN are covered in part by the CERN TH Unit, by the Baylor DOE grant DE-FG02-09ER41600, and by the
College of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Ward thanks Prof. Luis Alvarez-Gaume, Leader of the CERN TH Unit, for the support of his Unit.
Invitation to Excellence is a selective program designed to inform National Merit Semifinalists and other high-achieving students of
the opportunities awaiting them at Baylor University. A highlight of the exclusive weekend is the participation with faculty in an interactive
academic project. Drs. Lorin Matthews and Rich Sanker (director, Pre-Health Programs) coordinated the academic session for the sciences,
Code Red: Emergency Response to an Environmental Health Catastrophe in a Major U.S. City. Students and faculty discussed responses to a
hypothetical dirty bomb containing multiple chemical, biological and radioactive agents which was detonated near downtown Kansas City,
Missouri. Students were assigned to a team of science experts in biology, chemistry, geology, environmental science, physics, and psychology/neuroscience who must advise the president on how to respond – from enacting an initial medical/science action plan for injured citizens
to developing strategies for long-term mitigation and restoration.
Drs. Yumei Wu, Walter Wilcox, Ken Hatakeyama, and Victor Land led the groups of physics experts in the assessment of the likely
candidate materials for the radioactive substance in the bomb and the resultant radiation levels. They were assisted by undergraduate students Amir Ali (Jr, Pre-Health Concentration) and Janie Hoormann (Jr, Astrophysics). Dr. Matthews led a group of geology experts in the
discussion of contamination of ground water and the nearby Missouri River.
It was a challenging exercise for both students and faculty!
The 2010 Baylor Merit Badge College (BMBC) was held on campus Saturday morning October 30th. It
was attended by approximately 600 boy scouts. The Physics Department played a major role in the event: Dr.
Gerald Cleaver was the director; Dr. John Vasut and graduate student Jonathan Perry taught the Electricity
merit badge; Drs. Dwight Russell and Kenneth Park taught the Electronics merit badge; and Drs. Wickramasinghe (Ari) Ariyasinghe and Jay Dittmann taught the Nuclear Science merit badge.
The New Physics Department Polo Shirts have arrived...and have been quite popular with the faculty!
Physics Newsletter
Page 6
News and Notes …

The Shepherding Schools (Speaker Outreach Program) program letter has been sent out to about 30
Texas schools. Each shepherd should contemplate contacting their school in the near future. A special
thanks to all of the tenured and tenure-track faculty for participating!

New physics graduate posters have been mailed to approximately 500 locations. Thanks to Anzhong
Wang for chairing the Task Force. Thanks also to Chava Baker and Marian Nunn-Graves for their help.

The new PHY 5320/5321 curriculum changes were submitted and approved.
5320 Classical Mechanics I
Elementary mechanics, variational principles, Lagrange's equations, two-body central
forces, scattering, kinematics, rotations, rigid body motion, and Hamilton's equations of
motion; special relativity, including covariant Lagrangian formulation.
5321 Classical Mechanics II
Prerequisite(s): PHY 5320.
Small oscillations; canonical transformations; Hamilton-Jacobi theory; canonical perturbation theory; Lagrangian and Hamiltonian densities, critical points, Lyapunov exponents, bifurcation, chaos, noise and other topics in non-linear dynamics.

By vote of the graduate faculty, the chemistry requirement has been dropped from our graduate entrance requirements. This will be reflected in next year’s graduate catalog. Thanks to Dwight Russell for
chairing this Task Force.

We added a new Preliminary Examination Information section to the graduate physics website. Thanks
to Marian for this work! See http://www.baylor.edu/physics/index.php?id=77511 for more information.

Be on the look out for the next announcement for the Women in Physics lunch!
Dear physics friends,
Please consider joining me and others from physics this Saturday (Nov. 6) for a Habitat for Humanity
workday. We are signed up for the afternoon shift (1:00 - 4:30pm). We will be working at 2214 Trice Ave.
It is not necessary to bring any tools; everything you need will be provided.
I would appreciate it if you could notify me if you are planning to come so I can inform the Habitat office for
planning purposes. Please let me know if you have any questions.
I will keep recent information posted at: http://bearspace.baylor.edu/Walter_Wilcox/www/habitat.htm
I look forward to having you volunteer with us this Saturday! Best wishes, Walter Wilcox
Physics Newsletter
Page 7
Out and About …

Dr. Gerald Cleaver, a Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation, was nominated in October to be one of
the two candidates for an open position on the ASA’s Executive Board. The other candidate is Keith
Miller, a Geologist at Kansas State University. Online voting by ASA members for either candidate is open
though December 31, 2010.

Dr. Park attended the ICAM (Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter) workshop on “Novel Emergent
Phenomena Created by Spatial Confinement,” held at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge from
October 26 to 29, 2010.

Zhenbin Wu was invited to give a presentation at the CDF Collaboration Meeting at Fermilab on October 7
and 8. Zhenbin summarized the current status of analyses involving single top quark production at the
Collider Detector at Fermilab.

Dr. Victor Land participated in the 2nd Graduate Summer Institute “Complex Plasmas” held in Greifswald,
Germany, from August 5-13. Close to twenty lecturers from Germany, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and
the United States presented overviews, as well as talks on state-of-the-art research in the fields of magnetic confinement fusion, dusty plasma, chemically active plasma, solid state plasma and micro-plasma.
The lectures were attended by 50 graduate students (including Angela Douglass) and post-doctorate researchers from all over the world, including Germany, Hungary, India, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Spain,
and the US. Dr. Land presented a lecture on “Complex fluid models of dusty plasmas”. Another highlight
included a visit to the construction site of Wendelstein 7-X, a next-generation stellarator fusion experiment, at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.

Dr. Jeffrey Olafsen has had his edited volume published by Cambridge University Press. Experimental and
Computational Techniques in Soft Condensed Matter Physics became available in late September. Dr.
Olafsen also attended the NSF-sponsored symposium Complex Driven Systems: From Statistical Physics
to the Life Sciences at Virginia Tech held on October 1-3, 2010. He gave a talk entitled “A nonequilibrium system for the study of polymer-like folding in 2D via experiment and simulation.”

L. J. Olafsen and T. C. McAlpine, “Transparency pump intensity and differential gain in resonantly pumped
W optical pumping injection cavity lasers,” Journal of Applied Physics 108, 053106 (2010).

Dr. Linda J. Olafsen, Associate Professor of Physics, presented “Resonantly Pumped Optical Pumping Injection Cavity Lasers” at the 2010 IEEE Photonics Society Semiconductor Laser Workshop in San Jose, CA
on May 21.

Nancy Yu made a presentation at TXAPS on 10/23 at UTSA (San Antonio). The tile for the talk
was “Surface Reconstruction of TiO2(001) Studied by STM and LEED.” The authors are N.-H. Yu,1 K.
T. Park,1 Z. Liao,2 G. Li,2 X. He,2 J. Teng,2 J. Zhang,2 and E. W. Plummer,2 from 1Department of Physics, Baylor University and 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University respectively.

Dr. Zhengrong Zhang took part in the Fall Premiere at Baylor University on September 25th. She was
assisted by Kristen Deline, Janie Hoormann, and Brandon Doyle.

Dr. Walter Wilcox has been finishing his undergraduate textbook, Quantum Principles and Particles. “*It+
should be submitted to Taylor and Francis by the time this newsletter comes out. I have learned that the
hardest part of writing a book is not the actual text, which was essentially finished long ago, but the small
matters: footnotes, figure captions, equation numbering, etc., etc.”
November 2010
Sun
Mon
1
Tue
2
Wed
Thu
3 Colloquium 4
Fri
Sat
5
6
12
13
19
20
26
27
X. Zhu, UT
7
8
9
10Colloquium 11
B. Miller, TCU
14
15
16
17Colloquium 18
K. Gebhart, UT
21
22
23
24
25
Thanksgiving
28
29
30
December 2010
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
1Colloquium 2
Fri
Sat
3
4
10
11
17
18
P. Stone, UT
5
6 Last Day
7 Study Day 8 Study Day 9 Finals
of Classes
12
13
Begin
14
15Finals 16
Commencement
Conclude
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Christmas
26
27
28
29
30
31 New
Year’s Eve
Classes resume
January 10th