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Issue 15, Summer 2016
PHYSICS AT WABASH
Welcome!
It’s hard to believe that this is the 15th issue of the
Physics Department Newsletter, the annual effort to
keep our former students and friends informed of the
accomplishments of our students and faculty over the
past year. You don’t have to wait another year to see
what is going on—please keep in touch through
Facebook. And let us know of what you are doing so
that we can include it in next year’s newsletter.
Faculty and Staff Update
Jim Brown is glad to be back on
campus after spending the spring
semester on sabbatical leave at the
National Superconducting
Cyclotron Laboratory, where he
does much of his research. During
his time at the laboratory, Jim
worked to prepare an experiment
to measure the lifetime of neutronunbound nucleus 26O. By stripping
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a proton from a F nucleus in the secondary beam, 26O
can be made, and it then continues to travel forward
with nearly the beam velocity of half the speed of light.
Given the very short life of the unstable 26O nucleus, it
rarely makes it through the target without decaying
even though the target is only about a millimeter thick.
Setting up for this experiment involved some custom
fabrication of position calibration apertures. For an
early test run a custom mask was cut using the new
laser cutter at the Wabash College 3D Fabrication lab
run by Prof. Porter in the chemistry department, and
for the actual experiment Jim dusted off his machining
skills to make a thicker aluminum mask in the Goodrich
basement shop.
Jim was a co-author of two publications this year:
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“Population of 13Be in a nucleon exchange
reaction,” B.R. Marks, et al. Physical Review C 92,
054320 (2015)
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“Unbound excited states of the N=16 closed shell
nucleus 24O,” W.F. Rogers, Physical Review C 92,
034316 (2015)
Jim is pleased to be teaching a Freshman Tutorial again,
this time on rocketry in science and science fiction. Last
fall’s tutorial on nuclear weapons and nuclear power
made quite a splash on campus with their final project
being an interpretive dancing explaining the Manhattan
Project – quite a change from a final exam!
Finally, Jim was promoted to full professor at the end of
the spring semester.
Dennis Krause was busy this year
with large (14 students) sophomorelevel physics courses, PHY 209
(thermal/relativity physics) and PHY
210 (introduction to quantum physics).
In the latter course, he adapted
materials that he used previously in the
upper-level quantum mechanics class
(PHY 315) into a new modern physics
Wabash College, Department of Physics, P.O. Box 352, Crawfordsville, IN 47933
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text. In the fall, he also taught thermal physics (PHY
230) for the first time, and held weekly evening physics
GRE-prep sessions. During the spring semester, Dennis
took over being Department Chair when Jim Brown
went on sabbatical.
On the research front, Dennis focused primarily on
three projects:
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3.
Writing up work with Inbum Lee (’16) from the
summer of 2015 on classical and quantum
formalism which applies Einstein’s famous formula
E = mc2 to Hamiltonian mechanics of a system with
internal dynamics. For the classical case, Inbum
showed that the internal dynamics is properly timedilated, while for a 2-level quantum atom in a 1dimensional infinite potential well, there is an
oscillatory entanglement between internal and
center of mass motions.
Working with Ephraim Fischbach’s group and
Purdue and Mike Snow’s group at Indiana
University on constraining new forces.
Working with Ephraim Fischbach’s group on a new
theory for explaining annual modulations of beta
decay rates based on a neutrino refractive index.
Since our last newsletter, Dennis had two publications,
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“Weak Equivalence Principle, Lorentz
Noninvariance, and Nuclear Decays,” E Fischbach,
V. E. Barnes, J. M. Heim, D. E. Krause, and J. M.
Nistor, in 2015 Gravitation 1000 years after GR:
Proceedings of the 50th Rencontres de Moriond, edited
by E. Auge, J. Dumarchez, and J. Tran Thanh Van
(ARISF, 2015), 173–176.
“Isoelectronic measurements yield stronger limits
on hypothetical Yukawa interactions in the 40--8000
nm range,” Y.-J. Chen, W. K. Tham, D. E. Krause, D.
Lopez, E. Fischbach, R. S. Decca, Physical Review
Letters 116, 2211102 (2016).
In addition, he had two publications posted on the
arXiv:
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“Constraining Anomalous Forces with Pseudoscalar
and Axial Couplings Employing a SpinIndependent Analysis,” S. Aldaihan, W.M. Snow,
D.E. Krause, J.C. Long, E. Fischbach,
http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.06853
“Is there a signal for Lorentz non-invariance in
existing radioactive decay data?” M. J. Mueterthies,
D. E. Krause, A. Longman, V. E. Barnes, E.
Fischbach, http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03541
Issue 15, Summer 2016
Martin Madsen did a mixture of new
and old classes this year. He again
team-taught the introductory Physics
111 course with Prof. McDermott in
the fall, Adventures in Physics
(Physics 105) in the spring, and the
Advanced Laboratory experiment
course (all year long). The new course
(for him, at least) was teaching
Quantum Mechanics (Physics 315). He used a re-work of
the book that Prof. Krause had written and incorporated
more of the ideas from quantum optics and quantum
information. It was a good first attempt at teaching the
course and he looks forward to doing it again next year.
On the research front, Martin has been exploring a wide
range of possibilities including looking at trapped ion
clusters, acoustic levitation, and computational modeling
of trapped ions with Brownian motion. So far, the
projects are in the early stage, but there may be some
interesting leads to follow.
Danielle McDermott is delighted to
return for her third year at Wabash.
Last year she taught Classical
Mechanics, Electromagnetism,
Physics 111 with Martin Madsen,
and Condensed Matter Physics
(CMP), a special topics course. She
is proud of all of her students: they
embraced the challenges of physics
at many levels. With her help and
encouragement, four Wabash Physics majors presented
the results of summer internships at the Fall Meeting of
the APS Prairie Section. In Condensed Matter each
student completed a semester-long research project that
used one of the great unknown resources of Wabash
College, Dean Feller’s computing cluster that is
maintained by the Matt Roark, Wabash’s own High
Performance Computing guru.
Danielle returned to Los Alamos National Laboratory
(LANL) this summer as a guest scientist, continuing her
computational work with colloid particles. Two Wabash
summer interns also spent their summers at LANL to
continue their Spring ’16 CMP term projects: Minh Quan
Le Thien (‘18) returned to work with superconducting
vortices on hyperuniform surfaces and Yang Yang (’17)
studied granular materials on rough surfaces. Both
projects are nearly completed and will be submitted to
physics journals before the start of the semester with each
student holding first author credit. Danielle co-authored
the following publications during the 2015-2016 year:
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“Orientational ordering, buckling, and dynamic
transitions for vortices interacting with a periodic
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quasi-one-dimensional substrate,” Q. Le Thien,
D. McDermott, C.J.O. Reichhardt, C. Reichhardt,
Physical Review B 93 (1), 014504 (2016)
“Avalanches, Plasticity, and Ordering in
Colloidal Crystals Under Compression,” D.
McDermott, C.J.O. Reichhardt, C. Reichhardt,
Physical Review E 93, 062607 (2016)
“Collective Ratchet Effects and Reversals for
Active Matter Particles on Quasi-OneDimensional Asymmetric Substrates,” D.
McDermott, C.J.O. Reichhardt, C. Reichhardt,
arXiv:1606.05684, under review in Soft Matter.
Matt Roark has been working
throughout the year constructing
two revisions of a thermoelectric
powered cloud chamber,
modifying the original dry ice
powered particle detector
constructed in Ad Lab. It still
requires fine tuning and
adjustments but has proven
successful at viewing background radiation. “It is
satisfying to reveal a tiny slice of our universe that
would have otherwise gone unnoticed. I am also
reminded that 'doing science' is a process.”
He has also expanded into the world of Arduino
microcontrollers. “Designing a project made me rely on
past experiences in programming, electronics, and shop.
It was interesting to rediscover these lessons under a
new light. Plus, assembling your own Arduino board
forces you to become a master at soldering.”
Matt spent a portion of his summer continuing to offer
technical support in Dean Feller's computing lab. The
lab suffered several harsh power outages this year but
all equipment was successfully restored. The lab now
Issue 15, Summer 2016
employs new versions of our molecular dynamics
simulation software and we will soon be able to test
native GPU acceleration. Matt has also been supporting
two new students in the lab. Rithy Heng ('19) is studying
the conformational changes of retinal (both the active and
inactive states involved in eyesight signaling) and the
associated structural parameters. Andre Puente ('19) is
studying energy relationships in membrane-bound
helices as a function of helix-helix distance and lipid
environment.
Linda Weaver moved from the
Admissions Office to Goodrich Hall in
January 2016 to become our new
Administrative Assistant, replacing
Kristi Mangold. Linda is also the
Administrative Assistant for
Mathematics/Computer Science and
for the Education Studies Department
in Forest Hall, and International
Programs Assistant in the International Center. In
addition, she works with the Academic Center for
Excellence managing student tutor lab schedules and
time cards.
She serves on the Wabash Women Board as treasurer and
has co-chaired Women on Campus for 25 years. She has
participated in the Wabash Community Friends Program
for many years and has been a host mom to many
international students. She is a member of the Art
League of Montgomery County; past president of the
Montgomery County Leadership Academy board and
served on the Purdue Extension – Montgomery County
board.
She attended the NAFSA (National Association of
International Educators) Indiana State Meeting at the
University of Indianapolis on June 28th. She and Amy
Weir, Director of International Programs have been
working to set up the International Center and plan
international orientation for our incoming international
freshmen.
Linda’s husband, Brad (’91) is the IT Director on campus.
They enjoy traveling, being host parents, and
volunteering in our community.
How does a Physicist tell time? They use an Arduino
powered LED clock with double mirrors to project a
nearly infinite series of virtual images.
(Photo by Matt who built this clock.)
Keep up-to-date on what’s happening in the Physics
Department through our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/WabashCollegePhysics
Wabash College, Department of Physics, P.O. Box 352, Crawfordsville, IN 47933
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Issue 15, Summer 2016
Student News
Graduating Seniors
This year we had another large group completing their
final year at Wabash, including 9 majors (Alan Camacho,
Jon Daron, Cameron Dennis, Tuan Le, Inbum Lee, Eric
Need, Bryan Tippmann, Adam Wadlington, Tianhao
Yang) and one minor, Brian Hayhurst. Tianhao Yang
(’17) is participating in the Washington University-St.
Louis dual-degree engineering program, finishing
Wabash a year early.
Alan Camacho is now a physicist medical assistant with
Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. Cameron Dennis
and Inbum Lee will be attending physics PhD programs
at the University of Oregon and Indiana University,
respectively. Bryan Tippmann and Eric Need will be
studying mechanical engineering at Purdue as part of the
4-2 dual degree engineering program. We wish everyone
well and hope they’ll keep in touch.
Our seniors (and one junior) relaxing at Little Mexico
after completing their written comprehensive exams.
Awards Chapel Winners
This year’s winners of the Harold Q Fuller Prize for the
most outstanding junior physics major were Aaron
Wirthwein (’17) and Yang Yang (’17). In addition, Quan
Le Thien (’18) won the Physics Department Writing
Prize, and was a co-winner of the Wabash Phi Beta
Kappa prize for his paper (co-authored with Prof.
McDermott) “Orientational ordering, buckling, and
dynamic transitions for vortices interacting with a
periodic quasi-one-dimensional substrate” published in
Physical Review B. Inbum Lee was a co-winner of the
Robert Mitchum Glee Club Leadership Award. Finally,
Cameron Dennis (’16) received a Mackintosh fellowship
for his study at the University of Oregon.
Cameron Dennis (’16) and Inbum Lee (’16) were
inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Both received
Distinction on their physics comprehensive exams, and
Cameron also received Distinction on the mathematics
exam.
Photos from Awards Chapel. Top: Fuller Prize
winners Aaron Wirthwein and Yang Yang. Bottom:
Physics Dept. Writing Prize winner Quan Le Thien.
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Issue 15, Summer 2016
Celebration of Student Research
Summer Internships
A number of students participated in internships this
summer:
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Yang Yang (’17) and Quan Le Thien (’18) both
interned at Los Alamos through an arrangement
with Prof. McDermott.
Aaron Wirthwein (’17) received an NSF REU
internship at Purdue.
Bryan Tippmann (’16) was on campus working on
a project investigating the mechanical properties of
various viscoelastic materials with alumnus Chris
Johnson (’84).
At this year’s Celebration of Student Research in
January, we had a large number of physicists
presenting talks and posters:
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Cameron Dennis (’16) “Project GRAND: A
Cosmic Ray Experiment”
Quan Le Thien (’18) “Superconducting
Vortices on a Periodic One-Dimensional
Patterned Surface”
Inbum Lee (’16) “Relativistic Coupling
between the Center of Mass and Internal
Dynamics of a System”
Jon Daron (’16) and Tim Riley (’18)
“Nuclear Physics: Ultra-High Speed
Electronics and Data Structures”
Inbum Lee (’16) and Tianhao Yang (’16?)
“Magnetic Field of Superconducting Loops”
Eric Need (’16) “Placing Limits on New
Forces from the Decca Experiment”
Aaron Wirthwein (’17) “Optimizing
Interactions in Quantum Plasmonics”
Cordell Lewis (’17), Karl Prasher (’17), and
Bryan Tippmann (’16) “Towards the
Detection of La Ions via the Optogalvanic
Effect”
Tim Riley (’18) “Simulating Bacteria
Movement Through Micro-robotics”
Yang Yang (’17) “Towards Generation of
Continuous-Variable Cluster-State”
Prof. McDermott’s Condensed Matter class in front of Prof.
Scott Feller’s computer cluster which they used for calculations.
Prof. McDermott took a group of students to the meeting of
the Prairie Section of the American Physical Society at the
University of Notre Dame to present their work. From left
to right: Prof. McDermott, Inbum Lee (’16), Cameron Dennis
(’16), Quan Le Thien (’18), and Trevor Fitzpatrick (’17).
Eric Need (’16) explaining his summer research
poster at the Celebration of Student Research.
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Issue 15, Summer 2016
Society of Physics Students (SPS)
SPS was quite active again this year with a number of
activities:
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About 60 elementary school kids invaded all
three labs on the 2nd floor of Goodrich in
November as SPS teamed up with the Wabash
College Mentors for Kids to show off physics
demonstrations.
In March, SPS were back at the Carnegie
Museum this afternoon to celebrate Pi Day with
physics demonstrations.
A group of SPS students presented physics
demos to a group of students at Hoover
Elementary School.
Students learning about the Department at our annual
beginning of the year cookout.
SPS and Wabash College Mentors for Kids
Crawfordsville elementary school children having fun learning about magnetism as part of the
activities organized by SPS and Wabash College Mentors for Kids.
Wabash College, Department of Physics, P.O. Box 352, Crawfordsville, IN 47933
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Issue 15, Summer 2016
Pi (π) Day
A large group of SPS students set up demonstrations following Spring Break at the Crawfordsville Carnegie Museum
for their annual demo show in honor of Einstein’s birthday (3/14).
A large crowd of kids and parents enjoying activities.
Joseph Bertaux (’17) explaining the mysterious
plasma ball.
Yang Yang (’17) (left) and Tianhao Yang (’17) (upper right in blue) helping children with
electrostatic and Bernoulli physics activities.
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Updates
Alumni News
Since our last newsletter, we’ve heard from...
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Issue 15, Summer 2016
Ron Stoner (’59) has “been retired for over
15 years from the Bowling Green State
University Dept. of Physics &
Astronomy. I've done quite a bit of
international travel over those retirement
years. These days I spend most of my free
time, after family and taking care of our two
big dogs, working on international projects
with my local Rotary Club, constructing and
solving word puzzles, and genealogy. I do
occasionally still review a paper for the
American Journal of Physics and a bit of
Physics tutoring from time to time. I still
treasure the great undergrad education
received at Wabash, not only the physics
courses from Lew Salter and Bob Henry, but
also the broad liberal arts education that is a
terrific foundation for citizenship and
general critical thinking.”
David Woessner ('01) gave an enthralling
talk on the last day of the fall semester on his
career path after graduating from Wabash,
and how he's working to change the way
manufacturing is done as general manager at
Local Motors, the company that created the
first 3D printed car.
Matt Kay (’03), who is still working at the
Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center, is now
pursuing his Ph.D in physics at Purdue. Our
own Prof. Krause, who is an adjunct
professor at Purdue and who was on Matt’s
oral comprehensive exam committee, is also
serving on Matt’s Ph.D. committee!
Jeff Soller (’12) is enjoying I.U. law school,
and has been able to see the many ways his
education through our department went far
beyond anything he could have appreciated
right after graduation.
Chris Gorman (’13) was back on campus in
September to give a math colloquium
“Approximation, Interpolation, and the
Minimum Sobolev Norm” on his research at
the University of California, Santa Barbara.
James Gorman (’13) also returned to campus
in October to give a physics colloquium
Adhesive Fracture Along a DissimilarMaterial Interface," on his research at the
University of Michigan, where he is in the
Mechanical Engineering PhD program.
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Logan Rice (’13) will be starting the Master’s
Degree program at Northern Illinois
University.
Yifei Sun (’13) is entering his 4th year of his
PhD math program at New York University.
His research has shifted a bit from numerical
PDEs to more Electrical Engineering oriented
problem such as numerical optimization,
signal processing, and things like that. He has
found it to be pretty fast-expanding and
interesting.
Jia (Alex) Qi (’15) has started the astronomy
Ph.D. program at the University of Hawaii.
While he’s enjoying the nice weather, he
claims to “miss the real winter in Indiana a
little bit.” In addition to taking classes, he’s
investigating the merger of binary galaxies
which requires massive computer
simulations. He also got the chance to do
observations using the telescope at the Mauna
Kea Observatory.
We apologize to anyone we missed, and for
mispellinggs or other mistakkes made while editing
the material sent to us.
In the future, if you give us permission, we would be
happy to include your news and comments in an
Alumni News section of the newsletter. Not only is it
wonderful to hear from you, it is also very useful for
us to know what our alumni are doing and how they
got to where they are. Our students wonder what one
can do with a physics degree and it is great to have
alumni stories to share with them.
Physics alumus David Woesser ('01) came back to
campus to talk about working at Local Motors.
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Alumni Colloquia
During the past year, a number of alumni came back to
campus to give talks to our students:
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Chris Gorman (’13) gave a math colloquium,
“Approximation, Interpolation, and the Minimum
Sobolev Norm,” on his research on his research at
the University of California, Santa Barbara.
James Gorman (’13), Chris’s brother, gave a
physics colloquium, “Adhesive Fracture Along a
Dissimilar-Material Interface,” on his research at
the University of Michigan, where he is in the
Mechanical Engineering PhD program.
Issue 15, Summer 2016
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Pete Wilson (’84) discussed manufacturing and
internship opportunities at his company
Pyromation.
David Woessner (’01) gave a campus lecture,
“Changing the World—One Little Giant at a
Time,” on his career journey to his present
position as General Manager of Local Motors.
Ken Crawford (’69) spoke on "A Project in the
Republic of Macedonia to Strengthen Concrete
Bridges with Carbon Fiber: Lessons in
Engineering and Project Management.”
While our speakers budget is limited, we would love to
have alumni come back to campus to talk to our
students about they’ve done. If you’re interested,
please let us know!
At his physics colloquium, Wabash alumnus Ken
Crawford ('69) showed off prototype devices used
to test bridges in Macedonia that had been
strengthened with carbon fibre. Some components
of the prototypes were 3-D printed by Prof. Porter
in the chemistry department.
LaFollette Lecture
In October, Prof. Krause gave the 36th Annual
LaFollette Lecture “Grappling with the
Quantum: Trying to Understand the
Fundamental Rules Governing Our World” in
Salter Hall. You can find a written version of the
talk (along with other recent LaFollette Lectures)
at:
http://www.wabash.edu/academics/lafollette
Wabash College, Department of Physics, P.O. Box 352, Crawfordsville, IN 47933
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Issue 15, Summer 2016
Big Bash Physics Department
Open House
We had great time at our 5th annual Big Bash
Physics Department Open House. We invite all
alumni who attend Big Bash next year to come to
our open house. Just check the schedule of events
for the time and location.
Physics Fund
The number of students participating in summer research internships and in the PHY 381/382 advanced lab course
has grown steadily in recent years. Our faculty are engaging students in a wide variety of projects, but we are still
largely dependent on college funding for most of our summer student interns and equipment. Presently, the College
can support only 3 summer interns for the Math/CS and Physics Departments. We hope to improve this situation
with the Physics Fund for Student-Faculty Research, an endowed fund that we established in 2009. Dedicated to
supporting student-faculty research within the Department, we envision that this fund would eventually support
three to four research interns during the summer and advanced lab projects during the school year, and provide travel
funds for students to present their work at conferences. The goal of our Physics Fund is to foster closer interaction
between our faculty and students. If you are interested in more information about how you can support the
Department’s efforts to engage more students, please contact the Advancement Office at giving@wabash.edu or 1-877743-4545. You can also make an online donation at:
https://www.wabash.edu/giving/give
Thank you!!!!
We thank Roger Alig (’63), Dennis Henry (’67), David Nisius (’87), and Harrison Smith for their support to the
Department over the past year. Funds set up by our alumni and friends have supported internships, student travel,
departmental prizes, and senior dinners.
Contact Info
Jim Brown
Phone: (765) 361-6282
Office: Goodrich 308
Email: brownj@wabash.edu
Danielle McDermott
Phone: (765) 361-6305
Office: Goodrich 312
Email: mcdermod@wabash.edu
Dennis Krause (Dept. Chair)
Phone: (765) 361-6181
Office: Goodrich 313
Email: kraused@wabash.edu
Matt Roark
Phone: (765) 361-6431
Office: Goodrich 001
Email: roarkma@wabash.edu
Martin Madsen
Phone: (765) 361-6071
Office: Goodrich 309
Email: madsenm@wabash.edu
Linda Weaver
Phone: (765) 361-6292
Office: Goodrich 106
Email: weaverl@wabash.edu
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