The Society of Physics Students at UC Santa Cruz

SPEAKER: David Williams of the UCSC Pysics Dept.

THIS WEEK’S MEETING WILL BE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2009

VERITAS (the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System)
is a system of four 12-m aperture optical reflectors used to study
sources very high-energy gamma rays, with energy greater than about 100 GeV.
It is located at the basecamp of the Whipple Observatory in Amado, Arizona.  The reflectors, each with a 500-pixel camera constructed from photomultiplier tubes, image the flash of light produced in the atmosphere when a high-energy gamma ray interacts, a
technique pioneered at the Whipple Observatory using a single 10-m aperture
telescope built 30 years ago.  High-energy gamma rays result from some of the most
powerful phenomena in the Universe, such as supernova shocks and high-energy
jets from the massive black holes at the center of active galaxies. He will discuss the experimental methods used to detect high-energy gamma rays from these sources and some the first VERITAS results, as well as some work now beginning to develop more sensitive instruments for the future.

Speaker: Professor Debra Lewis from the UCSC Mathematics Dept.

THIS WEEK’S MEETING WILL BE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2009

Control theory is the study of systems over which we have limited influence; optimal control seeks strategies that give the most bang for the buck. Professor Debra Lewis  will provide some background on optimal control and Hamiltonian systems, briefly discuss a famous control system — the falling/self-righting cat — that sparked her interest in the role of psychological costs in biomechanical control systems, and she will introduce a family of cost functions in which a moderation term enforces bounds on the instantaneous control effort: tuning the moderation parameter adjusts the optimal response from “do it ASAP, whatever it takes” to “no big deal… chill out”.

SPEAKER: Prof. Robert Johnson

NASA’s Fermi mission (known by the name GLAST prior to launch) is now in

low-Earth orbit after a June 11, 2008 launch.  Both the GBM and LAT

instruments are functioning well and accumulating data, and quite a few scientific

papers have already been submitted for publication.  Robert Johnson will review the

science and history of the Fermi mission, including the substantial UCSC

contributions, describe the instruments and their performance, and present

some of the first scientific results.

For an aricle about  photons, electron and solar technology, click here.

This week’s meeting is Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 7:00PM in ISB 231

Click here for an article about the quantum to classical transition  

This week’s meeting is Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 7:00PM in ISB 231

Fellow SPS member Melinda Soares and SPS have organized an annual Science Alive workshop, so watch us perform these great experiments here on campus before the actual event on February 7, 2009 at Gavilan College in Gilroy.

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  • Levitation with Sulfur Hexafluoride
  • Magnetic Levitation by a Superconductor
  • Playing with Liquid Nitrogen
  • Fun with Vacuum Jars
  • Electrifying Fun with a Van de Graaf Generator

Save the date and don’t be late.

For an article about tiny man made stars click here.