Tuesday March 26:

Spring Seminar Series

Please join us as IC Physics Students present talks on their Summer Research:

Julia Russ, Tulane University, La Sigma Program

Transport Properties of Hydrogenated VO_2 Thin Films

Eric Somin, Ithaca College, with Daniel Briotta:

Clinton B. Ford Observatory Telescope

Joey Engelbrecht, Ithaca College with Bruce Thompson: 

Magneto-Optical Trap

Tuesday, March 26, CNS 204 @ 12:10 p.m.

Pizza and Refreshments will be available for $1.

Please bring your own cup.

Remember to Recycle, Reuse, Reduce.

Friday, March 22, 2013

You are invited to join the Ithaca College Department of Physics for a Public Viewing of the night sky at the Clinton B. Ford Observatory.

8:30 PM - 10:30 PM Friday March 22, 2013.

To attend a Public Night:
Just show up at the vehicle 'turn around' in front of the entrances of Smiddy Hall and CHS (F lot side).  A shuttle van will make regular runs to convey people up to the observatory and back down. Please note that there is NO parking available up at the observatory and that the access road is NOT lighted. For your own safety, please do not walk up.

Bad Weather Plan:
The "go/no-go" decision for any public night will be made at 3:30 pm on the scheduled date. Our web page and the recorded message at the observatory will be updated shortly thereafter to reflect the decision for that evening. So if you check our website or call the observatory at 607-274-3012 after 4:00 pm you will get the final decision for that evening.

Visit Our Website
/briotta/observatory/index.html

Tuesday March 5:

Please join us on Tuesday, March 5th at 12:10 in CNS 204 for a talk on The Nobel Prize in Physics - 2012 with Bruce Thompson, Ithaca College Physics

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland who have independently invented and developed methods for measuring and manipulating individual particles while preserving their quantum-mechanical nature, in ways that were previously thought unattainable. Their methods have many things in common. David Wineland traps electrically charged atoms, or ions, controlling and measuring them with photons. Serge Haroche takes the opposite approach: he controls and measures trapped photons by sending atoms through a photon trap. I will do my best to explain their accomplishments.

Pizza and Refreshments will be available for $1. Please bring your own cup. Remember to Recycle, Reuse, Reduce.

Tuesday February 19:

Please join us to learn about: Dying Stars & The Enrichment of Galaxies

With Greg Sloan, Sr. Research Associate, Infrared Spectrograph Science Center, Cornell University

A fundamental problem in astronomy is understanding how stars
die and in the process enrich their environment with dust and
the products of fusion reactions from their cores.  We have
tackled this question using infrared spectra from the Spitzer
Space Telescope of samples of stars in globular clusters and
nearby dwarf galaxies in the Local Group.  These samples
segregate the stars by initial mass and elemental abundances,
so that we can quantify the impact of both on the mass-loss
and dust-formation processes.  We are also preparing for the
next generation of space and ground-based telescopes by
monitoring populations of stars in different environments
photometrically, which will lead to better spectroscopic
samples in future studies.

Tuesday, February 19^th, CNS 204 @ 12:10 p.m.

Pizza and Refreshments will be available for $1. Please bring your own cup. Remember to Recycle, Reuse, Reduce.

Tuesday, February 5th, CNS 206B @ 12:10 p.m.

Please Join us for a talk entitled:

Origins of the Oceans
with David Jewitt, UCLA

Earth formed hot and probably dry, acquiring its water and other volatiles after the accretional phase.  Possible sources for terrestrial water include the comets from the Kuiper belt, asteroids from the main-belt and water-bearing dust from beyond the Earth's orbit.  I will discuss recent developments in understanding the origin of the oceans and other terrestrial-planet volatiles.

David C. Jewitt is a professor of astronomy in the Earth and Space Science Department of UCLA. He was born in 1958 in England, and is a 1979 graduate Of University College, London (UCL). Jewitt received an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology in 1980 and 1983, respectively. His research interests cover all aspects of the solar system, including the trans-Neptunian Solar System, Solar System formation, ice in the asteroids and the physical properties of comets. Along with Jane Luu, he discovered the first Kuiper Belt object in 1992 and subsequently identified dozens of additional belt members in a series of pioneering wide field surveys. From these, he discovered that the belt is dynamically divided into regions - the Classical Kuiper belt (circular, uninclined orbits, exemplified by 1992 QB1), the Scattered Kuiper Belt (also called Scattered Disk: large elliptical orbits with perihelion near Neptune, discovered in 1997) and the resonant objects (whose periods are related simply to Neptune's). The resonant objects in the 3:2 mean-motion resonance he called "plutinos" as a reminder that Pluto is one such object. These resonant objects can only be explained if Neptune migrated outwards, opening the door to new models of the solar system in which unsuspected planet-disk and planet-planet interactions can be important.

Pizza and Refreshments will be available for $1. Please bring your own cup. Remember to Recycle, Reuse, Reduce.