Colloquium Archive

Thursday, March 28th
Dr. Lars English, Dickinson College
“Exploring the Interplay of Geometry and Nonlinearity Through Electrical Lattices and Networks”

Electronic circuits can be an ideal playground for exploring cutting-edge topics in condensed matter physics, particularly ones that combine themes of nonlinearity and geometry/topology. This talk will showcase student-faculty research projects (past, present and future) that illustrate this connection. We will see what can happen when we introduce nonlinearity into simple electrical lattices, or when we carefully design the geometry of lattices to feature flat bands. What happens when we build networks out of individual Wien-bridge oscillators? Finally, can we use networks of oscillators for fast, unconventional computation?

Noon
Tome 115
Pizza provided

Thursday, April 4th
Sigma Pi Sigma
Induction Ceremony & Keynote Speaker Sam Wheeler '10 at 4:30pm in Tome 115
Dinner at 6:00pm in HUB Siderooms (for those who signed up in advance)

Join us as we induct our newest members into Sigma Pi Sigma followed by Sam's talk
"My Path Towards Designing the World of Tomorrow"
Communications have changed drastically in the last 20 years. The next generation of mobile telecommunications networks will need to handle more mobile devices, all connected to each other, with higher fidelity. Real-world testing for such a network is prohibitively expensive, so designers are increasingly relying on fast, high-fidelity models and simulations to make sure everything from their chip design to their base station placement is optimal for all users.

In this talk, he will describe how his Dickinson experience gave him the skills for every step of his post-grad journey: from graduate school(s), to defense engineering, to helping design the next generation of global telecommunications.

Thursday, April 25th
Physics Senior Research Presentations

George Carson '24 - "Photometric Analysis of the Eclipsing Binary KH 15D"
The edge-on binary T Tauri star V582 Mon (KH 15D) is surrounded by a tilted disk of dusty material that has occulted one or both stars periodically since first being noticed in 1995. The circumbinary disk has been modeled to have a period of approximately 1000 years. Following the complete obscuration of both stars, which ended in 2012, the trailing edge of the circumbinary disk began to uncover the orbit of star B, and will soon begin to uncover the orbit of star A. We present results from recent (2018–2024) observing campaigns as collected by Dickinson’s Britton Observatory as well as data from Lowell Observatory, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), and multiple amateur astronomers. Following an extensive reorganization of this and historical data for future standardization, we have confirmed results on the orbital period of the binary to be 48.37 days through periodogram analysis. Despite star B being mostly unobscured, we were unable to extract a rotation period through a similar periodogram analysis. Currently, we are exploring the inconsistent density of the circumbinary disk, notably the presence of non-uniform clumps of material in the trailing edge compared to the sharpness of the leading edge. Extinction and color changes of the system’s light curve allow insight into the size of the particles within the trailing clumps assisting our understanding of the properties of the disk. Using data collected in 2018–2019 and data from 2022–2023, we report on how the morphology of the disk has changed through extinction analysis. In the future, we hope to collect enough data for the period of star B to be resolvable and hopefully begin to view star A. We plan on continuing work on extinction and color analysis for 2019–2022 and for new data collected in 2024 to get a better picture of the changing structure in the outer disk. The clumpiness and transparency of the outer occulting material provide a unique opportunity to study the properties of dust grains in a potential planet-forming zone. Continued observations of the system carry significant importance since, in relatively short order, we will no longer be able to utilize the geometry of the system to probe the disk material.

Tyler Wasilewski '24 - “Measuring the Gravitational Constant: Unveiling the Fundamental Force of the Universe”
The Cavendish experiment is a fundamental method for determining the gravitational constant, G, which is crucial in understanding the gravitational force between objects. This experiment involves a sensitive torsion balance consisting of two small masses suspended from a thin wire, with larger masses positioned nearby. We explore an alteration using 32-inch diameter, 1/2-inch-thick cylinders as large masses, creating a uniform gravitational field approximation within 10 percent. By measuring the twisting motion of the wire due to the gravitational attraction between the masses, we seek to measure G; our measurement is still in progress.

Noon
Tome 115
Pizza provided

Thursday, May 2nd
Physics Majors Induction Ceremony & End of Year Picnic
Join us as we induct our newest Physics majors

Noon
Tome 115 (Induction & Ceremony)
Tome Outdoor Classroom (Picnic Lunch) weather permitting