Physics Blog


Wooster Physics alums — Kent Displays Colloquium

Wooster Physics alums — Kent Displays Colloquium

Asad Khan '93, Clinton Braganza '03, and Nithya Venkataraman '04 enjoy the sunshine with Dr. Don Jacobs and Dr. Susan Lehman The Physics Department hosted three outstanding alumni for a colloquium on Thursday February 23. Asad Khan '93, Clinton Braganza '03, and Nithya Venkataraman '04 are all from Kent Displays, Inc,…
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Middle School Science Fair Judging

Middle School Science Fair Judging

It was a great honor to come over to Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Wadsworth, Ohio on January 27! Physics club had a blast judging some awesome middle school science fair projects and getting to discuss science with 7th and 8th graders. As judges, we had a rigid set…
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CUWiP 2023 at Penn State

CUWiP 2023 at Penn State

The Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) was an incredible experience! Ten Wooster students had the opportunity to go to the conference at Pennsylvania State University. We enjoyed learning about the wide range of professions we can pursue with a physics degree, hear about different research topics in various…
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Compton Generator

Recently, we became aware that Arthur Holly Compton built an experiment to demonstrate Earth’s spin, while an undergraduate student at the University of Wooster. John Lindner explained Compton's device in a blog post.
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Successful Fall 2022 EGLS meeting

Two students who participated in The College of Wooster’s 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates summer program earned awards for their research at a recent regional meeting of the American Physical Society (APS). Read more on Wooster News.
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2022 Nobel Prize Colloquium

2022 Nobel Prize Colloquium

Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger are sharing the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics, for conducting groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single entity.  In an entangled pair, what happens to one of the particles determines what happens to the other particle, even if…
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PhysCon 2022

Every four years, the Society of Physics Students (SPS) and Sigma Pi Sigma organizes the Physics Congress meeting (PhysCon). It is the largest gathering of undergraduate physics students in the US, and PhysCon 2022, held in Washington D.C. on October 6-8, absolutely lived up to our expectations! The Omni Shoreham hotel, was…
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Groundhog in the fume hood

A groundhog visited Taylor Hall on July 6.See Paul Bonvallet's Twitter post and the August 8 report in C&EN.
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Professor Manz publishes article as part preservation, part celebration

Niklas Manz, associate professor and department chair of physics at The College of Wooster, recently co-authored an article in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, a  peer-reviewed publication. The article, “Science, serendipity, coincidence, and the Oregonator at the University of Oregon, 1969–1974” is the feature piece in the journal’s Focus Issue and…
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Science, serendipity, and coincidence

As part of my science history project, the article “Science, serendipity, coincidence, and the Oregonator at the University of Oregon, 1969–1974” has been published in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science. It’s especially exciting because it’s the Feature article in the Focus Issue, From Chemical Oscillations to Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics: Dedicated to…
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50 years later

50 years later

After MANY months of not traveling, I scheduled a meeting with Robert (Bob) M. Mazo, Professor emeritus from the University of Oregon, now living outside Philadelphia. In 1971/1972 he helped developing the key model to describe chemical reaction-diffusion systems. But, as he stated, he was “only the catalyst” and only accepted to…
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Outstanding SPS Chapter

2019-2020 Physics Club awarded Outstanding SPS Chapter – 4th year in a row!
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Preston Pozderac ’17 on “Relativistic Laser Plasma Interactions”

Preston Pozderac ’17, PhD student at Ohio State University, talks about his research in our Colloquium series on Tuesday, October 19, 2021 at 11 a.m. in Taylor 111. The title of his talk is “Relativistic Laser Plasma Interactions”.
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Thinking of Teague

Thinking of Teague

A sunflower from Teague’s memorial service Yesterday, Dr Manz and I went to Lexington, Kentucky to attend the memorial service for Teague Curless.  It was good to gather with Teague’s friends and family so that we could talk about him and remember him, and share our aching hearts with each…
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Wooster campus mourns loss of senior Teague Curless

WOOSTER, OH (Aug. 24)—Wooster senior Teague Curless is being remembered as an exceptional student, and wonderful peer and friend to many.  Curless, 21, of Lexington, KY, passed away early Tuesday morning after an automobile accident on State Route 585 near Smithville, Ohio. A double major in mathematics and physics with…
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For Teague

For Teague

Sadly and unexpectedly Wooster physics senior Teague Curless ’22 died yesterday. I was fortunate to teach Teague some physics, especially in my Nonlinear Dynamics class last spring. Teague’s semester project beautifully illustrated chaos in a double pendulum — a pendulum swinging from another pendulum, like The Swinging Sticks® kinetic sculpture that silently rotates and librates beside me as I write. Using Mathematica, Teague…
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Physics + Math + Dentistry = Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

Physics + Math + Dentistry = Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

Interdisciplinary research team publishes article on geographic tongue Alumna Margaret McGuire ’20, alumnus Chase Fuller ’19, John Lindner, the Moore Professor of Astronomy at The College of Wooster, and Niklas Manz, assistant professor of physics, published a co-written article in early March titled “Geographic tongue as a reaction–diffusion system” in…
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Silver medal in the 2020 University Physics Competition

Wooster team earns a silver medal in the 2020 University Physics Competition
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Physics makes reaction-diffusion waves in Physica A

Physics makes reaction-diffusion waves in Physica A

Professors and students collaborate on physics publication John Lindner, the Moore Professor of Astronomy at The College of Wooster, and Niklas Manz, assistant professor of physics, recently published an article with two Wooster undergraduates, Fish Yu ’21 and Margaret McGuire ’20, and alumnus Chase Fuller ’19, that was a result…
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Physics grads help win Indy 500

Physics grads help win Indy 500

Wooster graduates play significant role in Indy 500 What did the top three finishers of this year’s Indianapolis 500 have in common? They had two Wooster alumni working hard to get them on the podium. Danielle Shepherd ’14 and Collin Hendershot ’18 applied skills they learned during their four years at Wooster to their current occupations in auto racing. Shepherd, a simulation engineer for…
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