The Society of Physics Students at UC Santa Cruz

Event: Study Session

This Thursday’s SPS meeting is a special event! It occurs on Thursday, January 25th, at 5:30 PM in ISB 102 (note this strange location), and it will feature physics in one of the most entertaining forms: The Tesla Coil.

Nothing recruits future physicists like shooting giant electrical arcs at the middle school principals, and Hartmut Sadrozinski, Terry Schalk and their SCIPP colleagues have been doing such things for several years now, as you can see here:

http://scipp.ucsc.edu/outreach/index.html

This Thursday, though, they’ll be combining resources with us in the SPS the put on a special demo of their legendary Tesla Coil for those of us who have *already* decided to pursue physics. So why are they doing this? Three reasons:

1) Tesla Coils are awesome.
2) They want help with making their outreach program more accessible and dynamic to K-12 students, which means that they wan your input! You’ve probably been in high school more recently than the professors have, and they would like some assistance in tuning up the presentation.
3) They want to recruit some undergrads and grad students to join the Tesla coil team. If you like the idea of traveling to nearby and far-away schools to put on an incredible physics display, come to this Thursday’s SPS meeting and join up! Please note the weird location, downstairs in ISB 102, the UCO/Lick conference room.

Coffee, tea, soda and snacks will certainly be there, as usual. There’s not much metal in them, so you should feel totally comfortable touching them around such a large electric field. Trust me.

Everyone is welcome! Seriously, everybody likes to watch indoor lighting, so bring your friends. Image how bad you’ll feel when you tell them about it later and they say, “Why didn’t you take me with you?” We’re in a bigger room this week, so there’s plenty of room for them.

Tesla!

– James

This week has two things going on to which you might want to pay attention:

1)This week’s meeting will be on Thursday, January 18th, at 5:30 PM in ISB 231, and will feature Professor Ali Shakouri, of the Electrical Engineerting department, talking about his and his colleagues’ research into thermoelectric energy conversion and waste heat recovery. The site for their multi-university research initiative, the Thermionic Energy Conversion Center, is here:
http://quantum.soe.ucsc.edu/research/TEC/tec.html
I am of the opinion that novel energy research is rather important, so I will certainly be there.

Coffee, tea, soda, and snacks will also be around.

2)The first SPS Movie Night of 2007 will be on January 20th at 8:00 PM in Thimann One(1). We’ll be watching the indescribable classic Repo Man. If you haven’t seen it, I really don’t know what to tell you, except that you’re an incomplete human being. Just be there.

There will be more announcements later. Check back here!

– James

The undergrad lounge has moved! Did you notice? Of course you did!

Yes, the new and improved and ten-googolplexes-times-better Physics and Astrophysics Undergraduate Lounge (PAUL?) is in Thimann 103, just down the hall from the first-year physics labs. Thus, after you’ve become exhausted from attaching weights to springs and calculating, revolutionarily, a value of g = 14.6 m/s^2, you can relax and unwind in the new lounge.

What does this have to do with the SPS? Well, to fully celebrate the new lounge, we’re holding our first meeting of the quarter there! That means that this week’s SPS meeting will take place on Thursday, January 11th, at 5:30 PM in a strange location: The new undergraduate lounge!

And we’ll be having pizza.

Sorry; that should read AND WE’LL BE HAVING PIZZA! But you must RSVP to ucscsps@gmail.com so we know how much to get. Right now! RSVP! To ucscsps@gmail.com and nowhere else!

No, in all seriousness, you shouldn’t even be reading this line. You should be emailing ucscsps@gmail.com to tell us you want pizza. Imagine your embarrassment when you’re the only one licking the bottom of the pizza box. Please, have some dignity: RSVP to ucscsps@gmail.com right now, and then come to the meeting. We’ll eat pizza and discuss the upcoming quarter and generally inaugurate the new room properly.

Also note that this location for our SPS meetings is ONE TIME ONLY. Our regular meetings still take place on Thursdays at 5:30 PM in ISB 231. We have a monumentally good collection of presentations for this quarter, too. Check the Meeting Schedule for more information, and check back here for upcoming events, like the next Movie Night (in a couple weeks, actually).

PIZZA! RSVP! NEW UNDERGRAD LOUNGE! CAPS LOCK!

Done.

–James

Ah, the winter break. For some it means free food and Mythbusters marathons, for others it means world travel and weird cuisine, and for still others it means black coffee and senior thesis project research.

Whatever your break, I hope it was good, because the quarter has started. It won’t be a lazy one, as far as I can tell.

But it will be filled with SPS events! Check back soon for a look at this quarter’s weekly meeting schedule, and watch your inbox for movie night, field trip and special event announcements.

And, yes, there WILL BE a meeting this coming Thursday, January 11th, at 5:30 PM. Check back for topic and specifics.

Welcome back from break! Now go have some ramen.

–James