He also talked with our physics majors
and minors beforehand and
led a lively discussion of the ramifications of special relativity.
On March 5, 2003 Dr. Brian Greene of Columbia University gave the
Margaret and Herman Sokol Science Lecture on "The Elegant Universe." He
spoke about superstring theory and the progress that has been made so far
in unifying quantum mechanics and gravity.
He also talked with our physics majors
and minors beforehand and
led a lively discussion of the ramifications of special relativity.
Lawrence Ramsey was a process engineer working on thin film solar cells at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and now teaches high school there. He and Veronique had their first child on the Vernal Equinox, March 21, 2000. They have named him Rowan Jan Henry Ramsey. Congratulations! Here he is at four months, and here he is at 4 years with his little sister Lanka.
Alice Berman and Karl Whittenburg are managing spacecraft for Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore. Alice is the scheduling chief for
FUSE (Far
Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer). She gave a poster presentation
"Mission Planning for the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer" in
January, 2001 in San Diego at the American Astronomical Society meeting.
She gave a presentation on "Detection of Chlorine Ions in the
FUSE Spectrum of the Io Plasma Torus" at a planetary science meeting.
Karl was in the Mission Operations section
(Ops) for NEAR/Shoemaker
(Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous). It had imaged asteroid 253 Mathilde and
was in a 200 km orbit around
asteroid 433 Eros since February 14, 2000. Karl was part of
the team which successfully landed the NEAR/Shoemaker spacecraft on
the asteroid Eros in February, 2001. He worked on the CONTOUR project
to launch a spacecraft to tour past several comets, and then moved on
to planning spacecraft missions to Mercury (Messenger, launched August 3, 2004)
and Pluto (New Horizons, launched January 19, 2006).
Sue Harris sometimes brings her Astroscan telescope to help out at Public Telescope Nights.
Marie Aloia went on to get a degree in chemical engineering and is now a technical analyst at Chubb & Son.
Mike Scalora (Ph.D at RPI, 1990) does quantum optics simulations at Time Domain Systems in Huntsville, Alabama. He has three patents in optical logic devices, and three more pending. He and colleagues Mark Bloemer and Charles Bowden are developing transparent silver with high electrical conductivity by means of resonant tunneling in stacked layers. This was described in the February, 2000 issue of Industrial Physicist, page 6.
Frank Rice taught high school physics and chemistry and was president of the NJ Science Teachers Association, and is now retired.
Tom Hayes and Frank Hemko are in Louisville, KY.
In fall 1999, students in Dr. Hamdan's Concepts in Science course tried to break the Guinness world record for catching grapes in the mouth for one minute thrown from a distance of 15 feet. Using the concepts of projectile motion, Jamie Chau positions herself to catch a grape supplied by Don Frio and thrown by Brooke Powell. Later, Powell caught three out of every four grapes thrown. A record of 32 grapes in one minute was established on the Regis Philbin Show. (11/9/99)
