CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY PHYSICS DEPARTMENT SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA 93407|www.calpoly.edu/~phys ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED

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PHYSICS NEWSLETTER

CAL IFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY, SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA

NEW SCIENCE CENTER Yes, it’s true! Cal Poly is getting a brand new science building to replace an old and worn out Building 52. The Science Building, which houses physics, chemistry, and soil science, is just not designed to keep pace with new technology. In addition, the sprawling, one-story building occupies a huge amount of land in the center of campus.

August 2000, Volume I, No. 9

In connection with Cal Poly’s Centennial Anniversary, President Warren Baker and Dean Phil Bailey have launched an initiative for a new Science Center. The multistory Science Center will be built where the Building 52 A and C wings now stand, near the biological science buildings. Much of the space vacated by the D and E wings - the physics wings - will become a new Centennial Park. This landscaped open space will become the new center of campus, and the Science Center will be the most prominent building facing onto Centennial Park. Continued on page 2 “NEW SCIENCE CENTER”

CONTRIBUTORS We wish to thank everyone who has send us a donation over many, many years. Below is a list of contributors for the past year, but we wish to thank all of you. Your kindness is very much appreciated. We have been able to use your donations for the benefit of our students.

Gordon & Sabra Abraham Armand Amoranto Anonymous Donor David Babbit Dennis Baker Richard J. Bietz, Jr. Mark C. Bolyanatz David & Meg Bozarth Stephen Brock Leonard J. Brugger Paul Childs Jr. Geoffrey R. Clarion Verna L. Constantine Donald & Sally Darling David C. Darrow Grant A. Davidson & Shihua Wang Leslie Dudley Foundation of the Litton Industries Alan F. Francis-Lyon Jay Freeman Richard Genazzi Peter & Carol Govea Corinne Harris Howard & Sandra Hickok Honeywell International, Incorporated Intel Founation George W. Jeffers, Jr. Michael A. Johnson Ronald H. Johnson Endel Kallas Jr. Jeffrey & Tracy Kepple George L. Lang

John F. Leichel William & Kady Livesay Lockheed Martin Corporation Foundation Ronald Longacre Paul & Dottie Mana Edward McInerney Jim & Connie McLaughlin Virginia K. Murray David E. Outwater Alan H. Patterson George Piers Joseph F. Polen Teryl Pratt Paul S. Rasmussen James R. Ricketts Thomas Sanders Donald Shepley Keith & Karla Stephenson Keith & Marianne Stowe Sermin Suer Daniel Sunnarborg Paul N. Swanson Walter Takatsuka Eric Tober Charles Tolan Kevin Ulrich & Elizabeth Ballard Stephen Vincena Alan T. Young

Every effort has been made to list our donors correctly. If there is an error, please bring it to our attention immediately. We apologize in advance if there is an omission.

TABLE

CONTENTS

ARTICLES The New Science Center Drs. Hafemeister, Ozawa, Roach & Schumann Retire

PAGES 2 2-3

Litton Data Systems Donates Optics Equipment

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I DID IT, Teymoor Gedayloo

5

New BA Degree & Minor

5

Travels with Brock & Colleen

6

Physics at Sea

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Book Review The Canary Islands Bill Livesay

7 8-9 9

Recent Graduates

10

Puzzle Corner

10

Summer Fun

11

Outstanding Graduates

12

Answers to Puzzle Corner

12

Our Alumni

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Contributors

Back Inside Cover

HAFEMEISTER, OZAWA, ROACH & SCHUMANN

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R E T I R E David Hafemeister (aka DH) Professor David Hafemeister laid down his big Cal Poly backpack this spring after 31 years on the job. Dave grew up in Milwaukee and was proud of his Midwestern roots. He studied engineering as an undergraduate at Northwestern, then took a job at Argonne National Lab outside Chicago. His work involved building particle accelerators. He found himself strongly attracted to the physics questions to be addressed with these accelerators and so decided to go to grad school to study physics. He From left to right: Dr. David Hafemeister, Dr. Thomas Schumann, enrolled at the University of Illinois in Champaignand Dr. Kenneth Ozawa Urbana in the late 50’s. At the time Dave arrived at graduate school, a new nuclear technique with great promise for the study of materials, Mossbauer Spectroscopy, had just been invented and Dave joined the lab of Hans Frauenfelder to work in this CENTER new area. Following his Ph.D., Dave went to Continued From Cover Page Carnegie-Mellon University as an Assistant The College of Science and Professor. Then a strong dose of good old Mathematics has hired a professional Midwestern eltschmerzgedanken hit Dave and laboratory planner to help us with Gina, (this blessed team had gotten hitched during decisions about the size and layout of grad school days) and they decided to chuck the lab rooms. A faculty committee and glamorous life of high-powered physics for the the department technicians have met tranquil vistas of San Luis Obispo, setting up shop with him several times, and this initial at Cal Poly in 1969. phase of planning the building is nearing completion. At the same time, You can take the boy out of the Midwest but you a local architecture firm is doing site can’t take the Midwest out of the boy, and those evaluation and conceptual design. roots kept Dave on the move during his career at We’re planning both for state-of-the-art Cal Poly. He became very interested in the laboratory classrooms and - long impacts and applications of physics on societal and overdue - ample space for student political issues including energy and nuclear projects. disarmament. Along the way he was a founder of the Forum for Physics and Society of the American All this information will be factored Physical Society in the early 70’s, spent several into a proposal to be sent to the stints in Washington, DC with the State Chancellor’s Office in early 2001. Department and later with Senators Pell and Actual architectural design won’t Glenn, working on nuclear disarmament issues. begin until funding decisions are He also spent made, but we’re optimistic that construction can begin in 2003-2004 and that we will occupy our new home in time for Fall 2005.

NEW SCIENCE

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Robin Shen ’99 works in Santa Maria at LockheedMartin as an Associate Systems Engineer. He tests communications systems on rockets. Jesse Taylor ‘99 moved on from North Carolina State to Brigham Young University. David Hole at June graduation ceremony.

continued frompage 13

ALUMNI Ken Paquette’98 who lives in China where his wife works, took a ten day trip to Tibet. He relates some of his trip, “After getting used to the altitude in Lhasa (it’s 3600m high), we took off in a 4WD toward Everest. Three days out, four days back, rough roads, no roads, no running water or electricity, bad noodles, mud floors, pit toilets, altitude sickness, etc.” He emailed some terrific photos. David Reynolds '98 visited his friends at Cal Poly a few months ago, on leave from his new home at Camp Pendleton as part of the First Marine Division. His specialty is logistics. Weston Mikulich ’88 completed an MS in Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines in 1990. He worked at Chevron in Bakersfield for three years, then moved to Chevron’s laboratory in La Habra, where he developed scientific applications in C and C++. In 1997 he took a job managing Chevron’s largest seismic exploration project at Tengiz, Kazakstan. After two years of rotating overseas he obtained a position with a telecom start up company, RVS Platform Development, in Chapel Hill, N.C., writing Java code for their new call processing platform. Jim Richards ‘99 is an Engineering Technician at UFI Equipment for Biomedical Research in Morro Bay. Of equal importance is the success of the local musical group he performs with, Jive ‘n Direct. Todd Rigg ’99 went off to the University of

Mark Turner ’93 completed his MS in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Nevada, while working at the Desert Research Institute. His thesis project involved building and programming an automated data collection device to gather information on cirrus cloud ice crystals. He immediately found a job as a systems programmer for the Applied Physics Operation at SAIC. He says, “I help develop the Operational Multiscale Environment prediction of transport of nuclear/chemical/ biological hazard materials for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Also our model is used by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty organization of the United Nations for test verification. I went to Vienna, Austria, to work with the UN treaty monitors.” Kevin Ulrich ’94 has probably completed his MS in Environmental Science at San Francisco State University. He works for National Engineering Technology Corp in La Mirada as a Systems Engineer. Steve Vincena 91 visited Cal Poly in May to present a colloquium titled "The AlfenWave: From the Solar Corona to the Earth’s Aurora to Laboratory Plasmas". Steve completed his Ph.D. at UCLA and is currently conducting research at their Large Plasma Device. Melinda Wells ’99 was married in March 2000 in Atascadero.

Editors: Alice Gold Rachel Roberts Thomas Schumann Graphic Designer Rachel Roberts

Writers: Adrienne Battle Richard Frankel Alice Gold Randy Knight Thomas Schumann Nilgun Sungar John Sharpe Keith Stowe

3 DRS. HAFEMEISTER, OZAWA, ROACH & SCHUMANN RETIRE continued from page 2

sabbaticals at Berkeley (energy issues), and MIT (nuclear issues). Dave also wrote many papers, edited books, and was active at the APS. A few years ago he was awarded the Szilard Award by the Forum on Physics and Society for work on societal issues. Dave decided to retire from Cal Poly in order to return to Washington one last time (so he claims) to work on a National Academy of Sciences report on the future of nuclear weapons. He was strongly motivated to do so by his feelings of outrage at the defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the US Senate last year. Dave truly loves physics and felt that the physics colloquium (which he ran for many years) is “church”. He was certainly one of the pillars of the department and his calming presence will be missed. We all look forward to his return as a professor emeritus – but he can’t have his old office back! Kenneth Ozawa After 37 years, Dr. Kenneth Ozawa decided to exchange the classroom for time with his family including two grandchildren, his garden, and to study Spanish. Ken received his BS and MS at John Carroll University, and his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics at the University of Kansas. His long career at Cal Poly was filled with many achievements. He was instrumental in bringing the Oak Ridge Mobil Radioisotope Lab to the campus for a two week course. During 1977-78, Ken served as Resident Director at Waseda University in Tokyo for the CSU International Programs. His file contains a glowing letter of thanks from the then director of International Programs at Cal Poly, Kibbey M. Horne. “I particularly want to thank you for the extra measure of effort you made, not only in counseling students and assisting in their adjustment to a greatly different culture but also in fostering excellent working relationships with

our host institution, Waseda University. We are still reaping the benefits of your efforts in this area. “ Ken has served the physics community as President and Vice President of the Southern California Section of the AAPT, and as chairperson of national committees. He accompanied an AAPT delegation to the USSR and China. In 1989 he coordinated the AAPT Summer National Meeting at Cal Poly. During the same year the Statewide Academic Senate selected him as discipline coordinator for the Teaching and Learning Institute Seminar in Physics. He received awards for his teaching and professional work: The Distinguished Teacher Award at Cal Poly, Outstanding Teacher in the School of Science and Math by the School of Engineering, and a Distinguished Service Award from the AAPT. More recently he has served on faculty recruitment committees for the Ethnic Studies Program, participated in the in-hall office hour program the dormitories, hasOzawa been Dr.in Kenneth Ozawa and his and wife Kay nominated for outstanding faculty member by the women students in Engineering.

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DRS. HAFEMEISTER, OZAWA, ROACH & SCHUMANN RETIRE continued from page 3

Ken is obviously well liked by students, so they will be pleased to know that he will continue to teach one quarter each year. David Roach Professor David Roach has traded the academic discipline of oceanography for a retirement near the ocean in Hawaii. In preparation for that, Dave spent a sabbatical year at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in the Department of Oceanography as a Visiting Colleague, where he participated in a study of the equatorial currents of the Western Pacific. Dave received his BS and MS degrees in Physics from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, followed by the Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from Oregon State University. Before coming to Cal Poly in 1966, Dave gained teaching experience at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Wisconsin State University, and Northrop Institute of Technology. He participated in research projects or summer institutes at Leach Corporation, Stevens Institute of Technology, San Diego State, the University of Hawaii, and the Naval Postgraduate School. He was the department scheduler for many years. Dave plans to sharpen his scuba diving skills. Thomas Schumann Dr. Tom Schumann retired this spring after 29 years on the Physics Department faculty. He received his BS in Physics from Cal Tech in 1958 and his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1965, with a thesis in experimental particle physics. This was followed by a post doc appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and then a faculty appointment at the College of the City of New York. Tom has taught a spectrum of courses in Physics, Physical Science and Mathematics, and has taken sabbatical leaves to Princeton and UC Berkeley. He pursues special interests in cosmology, quantum theory, consciousness and philosophy of science, and has written several papers and manuscripts in these areas. Outside interests have included Dr. David Roach

running, martial arts, and swimming. In addition, Tom has been active in community issues, especially as a defender of the rights of the underprivileged and as an advocate of responsible use of community resources. In the future, he plans to return to our department to teach one quarter each year. During the other quarters, he will travel, swim and catch up on his reading.

Dr. Thomas Schumann & Dr. Keith Stowe .

LITTON DATA SYSTEMS

DONATES OPTICS EQUIPMENT

BY DR. JOHN SHARPE Recently Litton Data Systems (LDS) (Agoura Hills, CA) donated a large quantity of optics equipment to the Physics Department. The donation, which includes an optical table, motorized rotation mounts and a diode-pumped solid-state laser is valued by LDS at about $100,000. The equipment, which was part of a Litton project on advanced optical pattern recognition, will find its way into the optics classes (Physics 323 and 423) and will be used for senior projects and student research. The Department would like to thank Bill Allison, President of LDS and a Cal Poly Chemistry and Biochemistry Alumnus for making the donation possible.

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ALUMNI Scott Deeg ’97 now works on the technical staff at Technology Deployment International in Santa Clara. He shares some feelings with us about Cal Poly: “At each of the three companies I’ve been at I’ve been able to rise quickly. Some of this has to do with my being a workaholic (I’m sure my former instructors will never believe that), but as I look back it becomes clear how important and influential my years at Poly were. Beyond the nuts and bolts of the work, I think the department provides a wonderful environment for a young person (including people like Craig Kent who are young at heart) to not only sharpen their mind and develop relevant skills, but to also get a clue. At least, that’s how it worked for me. So, while I lack some of the knowledge of my CS colleagues, I’m still competitive because much of computer work is about how fast you learn and adapt…things I feel well prepared for. You all should be proud of what you have going there. It was a great day when I finally received my degree, and it now hangs on my wall with my most treasured honor, the gold star I received from Ron Zammit, stuck on the front. Thanks to everyone. Alex Demogines ’99 found employment at Miara, Inc. a start up company in the San Fernando Valley, as an Applications Engineer. “They are developing a three-dimensional laser scanning device and I am part of the development team.” Aaron Dodell ’98 recently completed his MS degree in Materials Engineering at Cal Poly. His research involved using the Laser Stroboscopic Video Camera system to image the metal transfer modes seen in Gas Metal Arc Welding. “For those of you who have done some welding, you know that much of the detail in the weld region is ‘blacked out’ due to wearing the welding

mask. However, our LaserStrobe allows us to see this region in real time and produce clear, sharp pictures. Using a 0.035” wire electrode, we imaged the transitions from globular to spray to streaming transfer.” Aaron has been hired to work at Cygnet Aerospace in Los Osos as a Research and Development Engineer. Cygnet produces replacement civilian aircraft parts. It is a start up company and he is its third employee. Angela Frey ’98 is working towards her MS in Engineering Management at Cal Poly. Scott Getty ’99 is in graduate school at CSU Hayward, to earn his teaching credential. Leonard James ‘94 is now employed at the U.S. Naval Civil Engineering Lab at Port Hueneme. Michael Jock ’98 was last heard from at Lockheed-Martin in Sunnyvale. Jill Johnson ’99 was accepted at UC Davis in Materials Science, where she begins studying for her Ph.D. in the fall. Joseph Emenaker works as an Analyst/ Programmer in the College of Business at Cal Poly. Tom Mannigel ’70 works for Intyst, Inc. in Houston, TX. Robert Mathews ’96 completed his MS in Computer Science at Cal Poly, and now works for Excite@Home . In his own words, “I write programs to help people get their jobs done. Mainly that means monitoring the server machines. We have a lot of servers doing a lot of different things, so we need to use a lot of automation to keep everything working smoothly.” Raymond Miles ’95 completed his MS in Materials Science in 1996 at the University of Vermont, and now works for Intel Corp, in DuPont, WA as a Hardware Design Engineer. He designs computer motherboards. He says there is lots of EM theory in signals cycling at 400 MHz.

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I DID IT!

OUTSTANDING

GRADUATES R E C E I V E A W A R D S

Teymoor Gedayloo, an emeritus faculty member of the Physics Department, participated in the recent California AIDS bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The effort raised money for housing and medical support for people with the AIDS virus, and for political advocacy.

Outstanding Physics and Physical Science majors were honored at the College Banquet in May at the Forum, at the Department banquet at Rosa’s also in May and at graduation ceremonies. The honorees were Kelly Sharp and Chad Miller for Outstanding Academic Achievement. Sharp graduated Summa cum laude.

Outstanding Graduate, Kelly Sharp

Dear Friends:

We congratulate all of our graduates on their successes and wish them the very best for the future.

C O R N CORNER PUZZLE E R P U

Outstanding Graduate, Chad Miller

SolutionsZtoZpuzzles on page 10: E 1) First draw aLreflection of house B across the closest bank of the river. Clearly the shortest distance from A to the reflection of B is the straight line which goes through point C. And since the length C to the reflection of B is the same as C to B, the shortest path will correspond to ACB.

A B C Graduate, Heather McIntosh

Above, Dr. Teymoor Geydayloo gets ready to train for California AIDS Ride 7.

Problems 10-60. All of these questions are even numbered. Therefore the answers are not provided. Graduate, Peter Langston

this question. I’ll let my butt rest for a while before thinking of the next ride. There are a total of seven such rides around the country. I would not mind thinking of one in the East or the Midwest. We were told that the contributions to the California Ride so far were over $11.3 million this year. I thank you all for your support and encouragement and particularly to those who helped me in my pledge. Who knows, I may ask you again for your contribution!! Teymoor

Yes, I completed the California AIDS Ride 7 Saturday, June 10th at 4:00 p.m. in Century City. There was a very moving and emotional closing ceremony with a large number of cheering friends, relatives of riders, and just interested people, encouraging and congratulating riders as we paraded by riding our bikes down the Avenue of the Stars to the grandstand. The opening ceremony on Sunday morning in San Francisco was as emotional and eventful with thousands of people lining up the streets of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Park along the route yelling and cheering. It was seven days of joy, pain, aches, pure exhilaration, friendship and camaradery unsurpassed by anything I have experienced before. Yes, I had my doubts at times if I could make it all the way, particularly when moving up many steep hills doing only about three mph but, I was determined not to let this hill or any other one stand in my way. Near the top of every hill there was always a large group of riders cheering and encouraging the rest to push a little harder. After conquering every hill there was a sweet and refreshing down hill ride of speeds in excess of 45 mph. The weather was great except for one night and the following morning of rain in Oceano. The rain stopped about 7:00 am and we resumed our ride. The longest day was about 106 miles from Santa Cruz to King City. The total ride was close to 600 miles, according to my odometer. Would I do it again? Well, it's a little too early for

BA DEGREE & MINOR The Physics Department is proud to announce the expansion of its curriculum to include a new BA degree in Physics, and a Physics minor. The BA serves those students who plan to pursue careers in science teaching at the high school level, as well as those who plan a career in science related fields for whom a physics background would be an asset. The curriculum has fewer required upper division courses than the BS, which allows the student to choose from an extensive list of electives in consultation with an academic adviser. In addition, the BA provides an attractive option for students in related disciplines who wish to pursue a double major.

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TRAVELS WITH

PHYSICS SEA

BROCK & COLLEEN

1999 graduates Brock Bose and Colleen Marlow completed a 'round the world trip, shortly after graduation. Here are some snippets of classic Brock and Colleen, from their postcards: Colleen and I are having a great time. We spent a few days in Prague and Budapest, and then we took a hellacious 35.5 hour train ride to Istanbul. Istanbul is worth it! The people are very nice, especially when they are trying to sell you something, and the food is great. So far we've seen the Sultan's palace, Hogia Sophia, the Archeological museum, the grand bazaar and took a dip at a Turkish bath. I am enjoying the food a lot. Lots of eggplant and rice pudding. The people in Turkey are much funner, I think, than those in Eastern Europe. It rained yesterday and I slipped and fell down many stone stairs and hurt my back and tailbone. That's the only bad thing, everything else is beautiful. India is pretty ok. I really like getting dressed up like Shiva and running down the street with monkeys and cows. So far we have only been in the south and I like the coconut pancakes. India is hot! No, I mean really hot, its like stepping into an oven, even in Jan. The people here are very nice, and the land is veryIstanbul-Turkey beautiful. Bananas are also very cheap here. Did I mention it is hot in India, because it's really very hot. The two have been reputed to have returned to the United States and will both be entering the University of Oregon to study for their Ph.D.'s in Physics.

BYstudents DR. KEITH STOWE Each year a group of Cal Poly choose to spend their spring quarter aboard the CSU training ship, TS Golden Bear, taking Cal Poly courses and visiting exotic places. Physics professors Poling and Stowe have been aboard the past two years teaching courses in physics, physical science, and earth science. They particularly enjoy the opportunity to live and work closely with their students, to get to know them very well and to share new experiences and adventures with them. The ship is a 110 year old 500 foot long survey ship on indefinite loan from the US Navy. It carries 250 students, one quarter of whom are from Cal Poly and the rest from the California Maritime Academy. To maximize the students' freedom in ports, the workload is correspondingly increased while at sea. The students find that the intensified course schedule and their daily shipboard duties keep them surprisingly busy Dr. John Poling & while underway. Dr. Keith Stowe

The travel itinerary changes each year. Last year the students visited Central America, South Pacific Islands and Hawaii. This year's tour included South America, the Panama Canal, the Caribbean Islands and New Orleans. Next year the plan is to skirt the Pacific rim, visiting Seattle, Alaska, Siberia, Japan, China, the Philippines and Hawaii.

Right: Students on the Golden Bear.

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SUMMER FUN

consulting firm. Yvette Macias will serve as a camp counselor for the Endeavor Space Camp at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Then in the fall she goes to Biosphere II in Arizona for their Universe Semester where she will take classes through Columbia University. Phillip Marashian has a summer position in San Jose doing technical marketing for LynuxWorks, a software company that makes RTOS for the embedded systems market. Steve Metz was awarded an REU at Purdue doing x-ray microscopy. Jason Morgan

Many of our continuing students have exciting career-related summer plans. Adrienne Battle is working for Nova Research in Solvang and continuing her geophysics research with Dr. Kenneth Hoffman. Adrienne traveled with Dr. Hoffman to the Canary Islands to collect rock core samples this past year. Ann Marie Costello and Carlos Damian are both participating in summer research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. For Carlos, it will be his second year. Kevin Cumblidge will remain at Cal Poly working with Dr. Roger Grismore on his nuclear astrophysics project, and with Dr. Art Rosen with the radioanalytical project monitoring radiation discharge from the Diablo Canyon Society of Physics Students (SPS) Nuclear Power Plant. Dean Top Row (left to right): Chad Miller, Teresa Wurts, Ann Marie Costello, Amy Darnell has an REU (NSF Balderman, Jamie Romnes, Jason Brown, Matt Ivazian. funded Research Experience Second Row: Scott Shield, Christy Mallory, Heather McIntosh, Greg Hather, for Undergraduates) at Baylor Daniel Dries, Chris France, Kevin Cumblidge. University. Dan Dreis will be involved in a research project at Montana State University. will be working at Rudolph and Sletten, Zachery Harris will do nuclear science research construction contractors in the Bay area, where at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he will repair computers. Heather Reddick was funded by the Department of Energy. James accepted to a Department of Energy Internship at Hartshorn plans to do research on neutrino Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in oscillations at the University of Michigan, Ann Richland, Washington, in the area of radiological Arbor. Greg Hather will be spending the calibration. Amy Wells received an REU from summer in Pasadena at the Jet Propulsion Florida State University in Tallahassee, and will Laboratory working in modeling work in the area of nuclear and particle physics. electromigration in thin copper aluminide Have a great summer! wires. Matt Ivazian will participate in Dr. John Sharpe’s research project in computational physics at Cal Poly. Justine La Vigne will work as an entry level scientist, at Sierra Pacific Environmental, a local environmental

10

RECENT

GRADUATES

Amy Balderman plans to enter the teaching credential program at Cal Poly.

Chris Castle is working with a law firm in SLO as a Patent Engineer. The firm specializes in intellectual property rights. Jason Brown is looking for a job in the Sacramento area and eventually would like to continue on for his masters degree. Gregory Demarest is a Project Coordinator for Professionally Engineering Projects, a company in Los Osos which does environmental testing. Lindsey Kerber moved to Maui to look for a job. Peter Langston secured a job at China Lake, a federal weapons testing lab. Kari Van Tassel was hired at SLAC as an Accelerator Operator. This will involve operating and monitoring the electron beam and C PUZZLE O R N E CORNER R 1) A woman who lives near the river in P house U A has to go to the river to fill up a bucket and take Z Z B. Find the path she should take in order to it to house L E minimize the total distance she walks.

A B

10) Does it take a conscious observer to interact with a system in order to collapse the wave function or can interaction with a macroscopic but inanimate measurement device also collapse the wave function? 20) Must two observers, looking at the same system describe it with the same wave function? If the wave function collapses for one observer, near the system, does it also collapse for another observer who is at a large space-like separation from both the system and first observer and thus outside of any causal light cone from the system and first observer?

troubleshooting when things go wrong. During down time , when the beam is off for 1-4 months, she gets to work on various projects onsite with the physicists. Chad Miller moved back home to Vacaville to look for a job while he applies to graduate school for next year to study for a Ph.D. in Physics. Kelly Sharp found a position at FGL, an environmental lab, in Santa Paula. She will work as an environmental chemist. Victor Zhang will do some traveling before he settles down and decides whether or not to attend art school. Dr. Kenneth Ozawa at June graduation ceremony.

30) Suppose all of the characteristics of a particle could vary continuously. Consider two bosons which have different characteristics. Maxwell-Boltzmann statisitcs describe the two particles as the difference between their characteristics go to zero. As one approaches the limit they are still described by Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. However for identical bosons, Bose-Einstein mathematics describes the statistics. Does this have relevance in explaining why some characteristics of particles must be quantized? How?

E

40) A system is initially described by a superposition of possible energies. An observer then measures the energy and gets a single result. What has happened to the entropy of the system? What has happened to the entropy of the observer? 50) Darwin's law of evolution describes, sometimes, the development of more and more specialized living creatures with less and less entropy per pound. Discuss the relationship of this evolution with the second law of thermodynamics. Hint: Don't forget the environment.

E

60) Take a glass with water and cream and stir them together. Then let the glass stand for a while. The cream and water will separate with the cream rising to the top. What has happened to the entropy of the water-cream system? Explain how this is compatible with the second law of thermodynamics.

7

REVIEW BY DR. JOHN SHARPE

Review of “How Nature Works” by Per Bak. Copernicus, New York (1996) In 1987, when working on a simple dynamical system of coupled oscillators, Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld discovered what they called “selforganized criticality”. The phenomenon is perhaps best described by the following prototypical model. Imagine creating a pile of sand by dropping the grains one by one onto a flat surface. Initially the pile is fairly flat but eventually it will build to a conical shape with an exterior angle depending on the surface details of the particular sand that is used. Continue dropping the sand grains onto the top of the cone. Inevitably, some of the grains will start toppling and this will cause other grains to fall and an avalanche will happen. Keep dropping and measure the sizes of the avalanches that occur. As you might expect there will be numerous small avalanches, involving few grains. There will be fewer avalanches that are of larger size and, only very occasionally, huge avalanches. Finally, plot the log of the size of the avalanches versus the log of the number of avalanches of that size and you will find that you get a straight line of slope approximately 1. So what? Well, it turns out if you plot the log of earthquake size versus the log of the number of that size you get a straight line with slope approximately 1. Or, if you plot the log of the size of world cities versus the log of the number of cities equal to that size then you get a straight line with slope approximately 1. And in numerous other dynamic and static natural systems you also get this behavior. It is Bak’s contention that these latter facts are related to the sand pile model. That is, many interesting, complicated systems (earths crust, human society) have organized themselves to a state of critical behavior characterized by the above “power laws”. An implication of the model is that small perturbations in any part of the system can occasionally lead to large transformations across the whole system. Moreover, since these transformations depend critically on the details of what has happened previously, and at all scales, they are largely unpredictable. A key observation is that this type of scaling behavior is a natural outcome of the dynamics and is not dependent on fine tuning details of the model. However, it must be pointed out that some natural phenomena that

would be expected to behave like the sand pile model do not in fact exhibit power law behavior. While the argument that self-organized criticality is of universal importance may or may not be true, it is undeniable that the idea raises several almost philosophical questions about physics itself. If the idea is correct then the reductionist program of physics when applied to the natural world is doomed to failure. For example, the earth’s crust would have to be characterized in unrealistic detail for us to be able to predict earthquakes. Physics then will have to assume a narrative rather than a predictive role, explaining what has happened rather than what will happen. This “relegates” physics to the status of some of the life sciences and there are interesting parallels between the theory of selforganized criticality and the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolutionary biology. This latter theory contains the observation that evolution seems to proceed relatively slowly most of the time but occasionally there are massive extinction events or spurts of new species formation. While the standard explanation of the extinction events is that some exterior catastrophic event must have happened, self-organized criticality would argue that in any complicated system of strongly interacting components major “avalanches” are bound to happen eventually. This paints a new, oddly disturbing, picture of the natural world. We are used to the world being relatively static and, barring freak accidents or massive intervention by humans, it will look pretty much the same in the future as it does now. Self-organized criticality removes this comforting stasis. As yet there is no general theory of the type of systems that Bak describes (nonequilibrium sytems). It is believed by some that no general theory is possible. What is astonishing though is that the computational and physical models can be remarkably simple. One algorithm for the sand pile model occupies a few lines of arithmetic. It is a sobering thought that despite the best efforts of some of the world’s best minds a pile of sand is an intractable problem. Perhaps that line from Blake “To see a world in a grain of sand” needs to be rewritten as a pile of sand. Finally, the book is almost worth reading just for the sheer verve of Bak himself. The provocative title itself is perhaps a giveaway. From his position as a permanent member of Brookhaven National Lab and as a theoretical physicist (not depending on the goodwill of the scientific community for research grants) he lashes out at the perceived wrongs of modern science. From the amount of money spent on superconductivity research to the mannerisms of his erstwhile colleagues in Copenhagen, no topic is too sacred. You certainly get more bang for your Bak.

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peak. Ironically, the caldera was the first crater to be defined as a "caldera", but it was not formed in an eruption. Instead, the top of the peak collapsed in a massive landslide that ripped a gash in the island all the way to the sea. What's left of the peak is used for some of the world's best astronomical observatories because of the elevation as well as the clear skies. Even from sea level you can see ten times as many stars in La Palma, as you can here.

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CANARY ISLANDS BY ADRIENNE BATTLE The Canary Islands are known as the Hawaii of Europe. Their beauty is unsurpassed among islands in that part of the world, just 60 miles west of Morocco. There are seven Canary Islands, all formed by volcanoes at the joining of two tectonic plates. In January 2000, Dr. Kenneth Hoffman and I met several colleagues on La Palma to begin a two week sampling expedition of basaltic lava flows. The objective of the trip was to gain several sets of samples which could then be used in paleomagnetic studies. We went to four different sites (places where several different flows were exposed, accessible, and unweathered), drilling three or four cores from each flow. We came home with hundreds of cores. The trip was enlightening in many ways. I am a third-year physics student, and although I have been working with Dr. Hoffman for close to a year, I have no experience with the earth sciences. In the field, I learned a lot about the way volcanoes form and erupt, the way lava behaves, the magnetic properties of lava, and how to look at a site and be able to tell things about the terrain of that region millions of years ago. I also learned a lot about Europe, and about the culture of La Palma, and about traveling: this was my first excursion out of the U.S. Our colleagues included Dr. Brad

From left to right: Dr. Brad Singer (University of Wisconisn); Monica Relle (Student Assistant); Adrienne Battle (Student Assitant); Dr. Kenneth Hoffman (Cal Poly, Physics Dept.)

Singer and his graduate student, Monica Relle, several French scientists, and a Spanish researcher who lived on the neighboring island of Gran Canaria and acted as our guide. Juan Carlos has completely mapped the island of La Palma geologically for the Spanish government, marking every flow and its age. His guidance was excellent, as he already knew where the most promising sites were. In paleomagnetism, we study past reversals of the Earth’s magnetic field in order to learn about the Earth’s geodynamo. Thus the most useful samples are rocks that cooled during a reversal. In all four sites, we found evidence of a reversal. Only in one did we find rocks that cooled during the reversal, and this looks very interesting. We have not finished the analysis of this site yet – indeed, we’ve hardly begun. We have demagnetized the samples to find out the orientation of the magnetic field present at the time of the rocks’ cooling. Now we will do some rock magnetic studies and probably also some solid state magnetic studies on the samples. La Palma was a very interesting place. In a way it was hard to tell what the native culture was really like because the island's economy relies principally on tourism. The little beach space is full of high rise hotels, and most restaurants cater to the German palette as well as the Spanish. The island is covered in banana plantations, the other main source of income for the Canaries. Everywhere you look, though, is a beautiful view. The island is sharply carved into "barrancos", or canyons, all along the coast, and it peaks in a massive caldera. La Palma was formed from a shield volcano, but it does have a

My trip to La Palma was extremely educational, and also lots of fun. I got to fly on three different airlines, pump water for a chain saw drilling into a cliff, learn about volcanoes and see the world. Adrienne Battle Photographs: La Palma, Canary Islands taken by Adrienne Battle

BILL LIVESAY BY DR. RICHARD SAENZ Bill Livesay, a 1967 Physics graduate, was recognized as the 1999 College of Science and Math Honored Alum during Homecoming Festivities last October. His visit here included a talk to faculty, staff and students about his work, his career and his life as a physics major. Like many of our alums he recalls fondly those hours in Quantum Lab with Dr. Rosen. Bill was an early pioneer in electron-beam lithography and founded two semiconductor equipment companies. His Electron Vision Corporation developed and patented the first large-area electron source. He has been able to provide current physics majors with summer internships and one of our graduates with a permanent job. The department is grateful for Bill's generosity, which has allowed us to update some of our Quantum Lab equipment.