News

• Building a better laser May 6, 2013 Geoff Collins

  Linzi Wu ’15 and Professor Xuesheng Chen work to make lasers cheaper, smaller, and more powerful.

  Linzi Wu '15 has been researching how to make lasers cheaper, smaller, and more powerful by using ceramic materials instead of crystals.

  Working with Professor Xuesheng Chen, she measured the optical properties of transparent ceramics doped with various concentrations of Neodymium ions to find out which concentrations produced the most efficient absorption and emission of infrared light. Linzi presented her findings at the 2013 Wheaton Academic Festival (pictured here), and will present her work at the New England section of the American Physical Society next fall.

• The Water Balloon Challenge October 24, 2012 Colleen Wheeler

  Watch Wheaton College’s introductory physics class leave their lab and put theory to the test.

  On a beautiful October morning at Wheaton College, an introductory physics class left their lab behind and stepped outside. They aimed to impress (and soak!) their professor while investigating kinetic and potential energy:

  Psst... If you want more "water balloon goodness" here's last year's experiment:
  
• Cold as ice October 9, 2012 Geoff Collins

  A new study by Prof. Geoffrey Collins and colleagues in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows that water ice gets much harder at very cold temperatures.

  A NASA grant to Prof. Geoffrey Collins to study erosion on Saturn's moon Titan turned into a research project about the hardness of water ice at very low temperatures. Collins and his collaborators at San Francisco State University recently published the results of their study in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The experiments tested the strength of ice in tension, and the energy required to propagate cracks through ice. Similar experiments had previously been done down to temperatures of -50 C, but the new experiments used cooling with liquid nitrogen to explore the behavior down to -170 C, which is more relevant to the surfaces of moons in the outer solar system. As the ice became colder, it also became harder to break, so it is expected that ice in the outer solar system should be harder than ice in glaciers on Earth.

• Laser grant August 31, 2012 Geoff Collins

  The Physics department is now home to a state-of-the-art tunable laser, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation.
• Hot stuff January 15, 2012 Geoff Collins

  Scott Tarlow ’12 spent a summer working on the physics of lava flows.
• Experiencing the past January 10, 2012 Geoff Collins

  Students in the Deep Time FYS take a camping trip and travel back in time.
• Bright ideas October 22, 2011 Geoff Collins

  Tyler Bennett ’12 explores new materials for energy-efficient lighting.
• Astronomy on the Cape June 22, 2011 Geoff Collins

  Professor Barker’s giant 32″ telescope now has a larger audience of elementary school students on Cape Cod.
• Love to teach physics December 3, 2010 admin

  Becky Johnson ’11 wants to share her excitement about physics with high school students.
• Mapping Ganymede September 29, 2009 Geoff Collins

  Several Wheaton students have contributed to the first global map of geology on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.