ScotBlogs

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 … Continue reading →

Wooster physics graduates do many things after Wooster, including graduate work. Below is a map of some of the graduate schools they have attended, one dimension of the influence of our department. If you are a recent Wooster physics graduate … Continue reading →

Sadly and unexpectedly Wooster physics senior Teague Curless ’21 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 … Continue reading →

  We had the good fortune to work (remotely) with four TRAYLS groups in Alaska. The TRAYLS (Training Rural Alaskan Youth Leaders & Students) Groups from Southeast Alaska teamed up with Earth Scientist students  Ricky Papay (’22), Wenshuo Zhao (‘23) and Lucie Fiala (‘23) … Continue reading →

Recently at its Boca Chica launch site, SpaceX stacked a Starship on a Superheavy booster to briefly form history’s largest rocket, dwarfing the Apollo Saturn V. Both a fit-check and a statement, SpaceX released the photograph below in black & … Continue reading →

Members of the Wooster Tree Ring Lab had a great opportunity to travel to a seldom-visited part of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve – a transect from Wolf Lake to Burroughs Glacier. We were there because there is 2500 … Continue reading →

Fermions like electrons, protons, and neutrons inhabit a 720° world: 360° rotations negate their quantum states, but 720° rotations restore them. In Dirac notation [latex display=”true”]R_{2\pi}|\psi \rangle = -|\psi \rangle = e^{i \pi}|\psi \rangle,[/latex] but [latex display=”true”]R_{4\pi}|\psi \rangle = +|\psi \rangle= … Continue reading →

Despite the pandemic, the SE program continued its commitment to working with social change organizations. Three students, Claira Schiffrik, Eraj Sikandar, and Keegan King advised by Professor Moledina worked with FoodSphere: the Entrepreneurial Center at Local Roots for the 2021 local … Continue reading →

Marvelously, the square of the sum of natural numbers is the sum of their cubes! Equivalently, the sum of their cubes is the square of their sum. This mathematical gem is attributed to Nicomachus of Gerasa who lived almost 2000 years … Continue reading →

As I transition to emeritus status tomorrow, I reflect on 33 years at Wooster. I am thankful for the freedom I’ve had to design my own courses, including eight first-year seminars; for the flexibility to explore a wide range of … Continue reading →