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Featured Article from JURP
2005 Sigma Pi Sigma Undergraduate Research Awards
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2005
SPS National Intern
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© 2005, The Society of Physics Students & the American Institute of Physics
We
designed a low cost NaI(Tl) scintillation detector and single channel
analyzer to be used to measure the rest energy of the electron. We
used the instrument to deduce the behavior of electrons following
Compton scattering collisions in the crystal. We found a value of
the rest energy of the electron to be (0.51±0.02) MeV and experimentally
verified Einstein’s energy-momentum relationship.
A
single mode diode laser system has been set up for the future study
of Doppler free spectroscopy and atom cooling and trapping. Within
this system, we have observed the hyperfine transitions of the 85Rb
and 87Rb D2 resonance. Over the course of the next several months,
we wish to further study the Doppler free spectroscopy of the Rubidium
atom, achieve laser frequency stabilization and lock to a hyperfine
transition, attain laser beam splitting and polarization control to
prepare for trapping atoms with a magneto-optical trap (MOT), design
or purchase a Rb oven, and build a second laser for hyperfine re-pumping.
We
want to purchase a Torsion Pendulum that can be driven to chaos to
complement our work on a chaotic resistor-inducor-diode experiment.
We have preliminary results for the fractal dimension of the strange
attractor of the R-L-Diode Circuit, however our goal is to figure
out what this fractal dimension is telling us about the physics of
this system. We are interested in studying other chaotic systems in
order to broaden our understanding for chaos, dimensionality of the
strange attractor and how that dimensionality relates on the physics
of the system.
Political
activist and physics major do not often go together. That is why I was
mildly surprised to find myself, two days before my physics final, traveling
on a bus to Washington, DC, for a political protest. We
were going to set up a mock filibuster for more than 24 hours in front
of the Capitol, in order to protest the "Nuclear Option" proposed
by Senate Republican leaders to eliminate the use of the filibuster
in blocking judicial nominations. This was the culmination of a mock
filibuster that had started more than two weeks earlier in front of
the Frist Campus Center at Princeton University.
SPS
holds sessions for members to present their undergraduate research at
many professional society meetings around the United States each year.
Both poster and oral sessions are conducted at meetings of the American
Physical Society (APS), the American Association of Physics Teachers,
and the American Geophysical Union, just to name a few. Travel grants
are available for those who register the earliest. 
Last
year SPS and ComPADRE rolled out an upgraded and redesigned version
of 
even
more submissions this year, so stay tuned. ComPADRE, the physics and
astronomy digital library, is part of the 
