9/22/2000

Congratulations to John Hubisz, who recently won SINTEST 2000. The prize is a nice certificate and a copy of A Decade of SIN (Plus Sixteen) (The "Sir Issac Newton" (SIN) contest has been around for quite a while!)

Faculty member gets a form of energy named after him! Congratulations to David Brown for "Brown-York quasilocal energy" which has started appearing in the titles of talks and papers. A recent seminar by Ivan Booth at the University of Waterloo "Tidal heating - an astrophysical application of the Brown-York quasilocal energy" features the abstract:

"The volcanoes of Io are a physical manifestation of the tidal heating of that moon's interior by Jupiter's gravitational field. This is a graphic example of the general phenomena of an external tidal field doing work on a self-gravitating body. The amount of this work has been calculated in the past by both Newtonian and relativistic pseudo-tensor methods. In this talk, I discuss how Jolien Creighton and I have reproduced those results using the Brown-York quasilocal energy formalism."

Congratulations to David Wood, elected to the Executive Committee of the National Society of Physics Students Council. Last week David attended the quadrennial Sigma Pi Sigma symposium, held in conjunction with the annual SPS National Council meeting. David attended as an associate councilor, representing North and South Carolina. The US is divided into eighteen zones, and David was elected by the associate councilors to be the sole student member of the executive committee. He serves for the 2000-2001 academic year.

World Record UCN production! A Los Alamos collaboration with Albert Young produced a Ultra Cold Neutron (UCN) density greater than 100 UCN/cm³, smashing the previous record of 41 UCN/cm³ held by the Institute Lave-Langevin. The UNCs were stored in a stainless steel bottle. In future experiments they hope to store an order of magnitude more and use them for fundamental measurements on the neutron.

Mark your calendar for a Compact Planning meeting with Chancellor Fox, Provost Hall, and Vice Chancellor Moreland. A College level wrap-up Compact Planning meeting with University administrators is scheduled for December 20, 3:00-5:00pm. (Yes, it's graduation day but it's the only time that works for everybody). PAMS Department Heads, Associate Deans, and Dean Solomon will be in attendance. All faculty are invited to attend and participate. A specific agenda will be available closer to the date.

There ARE compact deliverables within the next year! For Physics these are:
By December 31, publish a report on the polymer science workshop and the nanoscale strategic planning workshop.
By January 1, open the instructional facility in the Harellson pie-wedge.
By June 30, submit a request to establish the Center for High Performance Simulation, develop a common graduate curriculum in computational sciences, and publish the proceedings of the SNS neutron physics workshop.

The National Task Force in Undergraduate Physics is coming to visit NC State University Monday and Tuesday October 9-10.The task force was established in fall 1999 by APS, AIP and AAPT and is co chaired by Robert Hillborn of Amherst and Ruth Howes of Ball State (and current AAPT President). The visiting team coming to NC State consists of Ruth Howes, Tom Okuma of Lee College (immediate past President of AAPT) and Laurie McNeil (UNC- Chapel Hill). The July 2000 newsletter of the APS forum on Education (available on line at www.aps-fed.org) has a full discussion of the purpose and plans of the task force. They want to see what works here, and why it works. They are looking forward to talking with students and faculty about any and all aspects of our undergraduate physics majors program and our role in teaching for the University community. Steve Reynolds and Bob Beichner are coordinating the visit and setting up the schedule.

The Top American Research Universities - where are they? A partial answer is provided in a recent report from the Lombardi Program on Measuring University Performance, available on the web at: thecenter.ufl.edu/research2000.html

Free Trial membership in the American Physical Society: Any student (graduate or undergraduate) is eligible for a one year free membership in the APS. It's easy to apply- go to www.aps.org and fill out the form. Don't forget to join some of the APS specialized units, and take note of, for example, the forums on education, physics and society, and industrial and applied physics. Join now!