Society of Physics Students:
Wesleyan University
| President: | Carl West | ctwest | [previously Scott Knauert] |
| Vice-President: | Rachel Brown | rdbrown | |
| Secretary: | Marshall Johnson | mcjohnson | [previously Otto Boutin] |
| Web Designer: | Daniel Buchoff | dbuchoff | |
| Faculty Advisor: | Greg Voth | gvoth |
If you would like to contact us, please use the usernames from the list above and add @wesleyan.edu.
Join us every Monday night at 10:00 p.m. in the Cady Lounge or conference room (both on the second floor Science Tower) for some fun, food, laughter and a say in what SPS will be blowing up doing next. All are welcome!
"The purpose of this Chapter shall be the advancement and diffusion of physics knowledge, the encouragement of interest in physics throughout the academic and local communities, and the introduction of students to the professional community."
We also hope to both bring together the current physics majors, and to provide the opportunity for the general public to learn more about physics in general in some unorthodox ways. The SPS, here at Wesleyan, is not just for those who have already determined that they want to spend the rest of their lives as physicists, but also for those who just like physics in general, and want it beyond the offerings of the regular course curriculum.
Our official constitution is now available online. [html] [pdf]
We constructed a furnace for melting Aluminium in the hopes of making aluminium muffin sculptures. Many sparks and lots of charcoal later, we were able to slightly soften the aluminium. Pretty, pretty sparks — See movies!
Carl made a vacuum-powered cannon to shoot out ping-pong balls! Check out the link above for Carl's page describing the contraption.
We made ice cream with liquid nitrogen and set off rockets.
Some of our plans for the 2005-2006 academic year have been carried out. We had our liquid nitrogen ice cream party with the science house in September.
Also last month we participated in the department's celebration of Einstein's Miraculous Year by doing demonstrations of special relativity, brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect at the public lecture. As a part of the lighter side of the World Year of Physics celebrations, SPS showed the movie, IQ.
The tshirt design contest is now over, and we would like to announce our winner, Dan Slimmon. The front image for his design can be viewed here and here is the back.
During this spring semester we successfully completed the tshirt sales. We also had events during WesFest including liquid nitrogen ice cream, attracting almost 100 students, parents, and prefrosh! Other events this semester included rockets, robots, and a MythBusters Marathon at Science House.
As a final send off in May, we recreated the Mentos and Coca-Cola experiment. A short video of that event is available here: Mentos and Coke
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