THE PHYSICS MAJOR

Last year the Department's technician was awarded the largest Employee Incentive Award ever given at SSU, the amount of the award based on the savings to the state.

Anderson proposed that the campus have a single master contract for the various gases used in such departments as art, kinesiology, and physics & astronomy. Under this contract, gas cylinders are delivered and the empty ones picked up for filling on a regular schedule at each building. Previously, each department had its own employee drive to Santa Rosa to pick up its own gas cylinders. Steve's idea now saves the university more than $10,000 per year.

Editor's note: Identical twins Scott and Sean Fraser came to SSU from Piner High School in Santa Rosa. After completing more than 200 units, one has perfect grades while the other has only a few A-minuses to "mar" his transcript. Both were awarded prestigious $7000 Barry Goldwater scholarships for next year.

This semester ends our sixth year at SSU. One reason we've been here so long is that we are meeting all requirements for a BS in Physics and BA's in Math and English. It has also been hard to leave simply because SSU has been so much fun.

But we have left SSU for the past two summers to participate in Research Experience for Undergraduate programs. Last summer, at the Pennsylvania State University, we were fortunate enough to work on an interesting project about fundamental particle collisions. We used a computer to generate random momenta for interacting gluons, and then evaluated the probabilities that the interactions would occur. We learned a lot and had a fun introduction to graduate school in physics. We are planning to continue to work with our Penn State advisor this summer by e-mail and we hope to publish the results in a short paper.

The previous summer we participated in the REU program at the College of William and Mary, where we had the opportunity to learn something about fluid mechanics and X-ray tomography, and we also got to see historic Williamsburg.

Some people are surprised that we have taken all of the same courses and were accepted to the same REU programs. In the first case, can we help it if we have the same interests? In the second case, perhaps it's luck, since not everything we do is the same. We received the quite different scores of 1 and 11 on this year's Putnam Exam in mathematics (the reverse, oddly enough, of our scores last year).

We were pleasantly surprised to have each received a Goldwater Scholarship for the 1994-95 year. We will graduate after spending them (the year and the scholarship) at the University of Heidelberg in Germany through the California State University International Program, where we will concentrate on math and German. After that, we are both interested in attending graduate school in theoretical physics and learning about general relativity, quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics; it would be nice to take an introductory course in elementary particles in Germany if time permits. We hope the professors in Heidelberg are as inspiring as the ones we've had here!

SSU physics alumni had so much fun at the reunion last fall that they are planning another gathering in fall 1994. Many of the alumni thought that it would be fun to socialize with the current students; this inspired them to think of a joint alumni-SPS picnic and volleyball game. The date has yet to be set, but alumni should look for a flier in the mail this summer.

During the past year, I have been on sabbatical at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, working with the Particle Astrophysics group. This group was started by Prof. Elliott Bloom, to investigate high-energy emission in X-rays and gamma-rays from black holes and neutron stars using space-borne instruments. I have been helping them to design a new instrument called GRSST, Gamma-Ray Silicon Strip Telescope, for which we hope to receive funding from the Department of Energy. This device uses many layers of solid state silicon detectors to track the paths of electron-positron pairs which are produced when a gamma-ray enters some high-Z material at the top of the stack. After the pair-conversion event, the electrons and positrons travel down through the silicon until they are absorbed at the bottom of the stack by a CsI calorimeter, which measures the deposited energy. By following the tracks backward, the direction of the incident photon can be derived, so that the detector acts like a telescope to make crude images of the high-energy (20 MeV - 50 GeV) gamma-ray sky. Objects that are visible with this type of telescope include pulsars, gamma-ray burst sources and active galactic nuclei.

I have also been working on developing a ground data analysis software system to analyze data from an experiment called USA (Unconventional Stellar Aspect), which will be launched in 1995 on the ARGOS Air Force satellite. This is a proportional counter X-ray astronomy experiment which will study the brightest neutron star and black hole binaries, for extended periods of time and at very high time-resolution. The group at SLAC built the mechanical collimators which define the field-of-view of the detectors, as well as some of the structural support for the experiment. They are also helping to write the flight software (which runs in computers inside the experiment.) This project is a collaboration with a group of scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, who are refurbishing the proportional counters, which originally flew on the SPARTAN shuttle mission. The NRL is also integrating and testing the experiment, to make sure it is spaceworthy. Some of my time at SLAC has been used to finish writing up the results of NASA-funded research that I have been doing at SSU over the past few years. Mallory Roberts has been assisting me in these efforts, and we have presented papers at meetings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the American Astronomical Society. Recently, a paper of ours entitled "Detection of X-ray Emission from the PSR 1259-63/SS2883 Binary System" was accepted for publication in the June 1, 1994, issue of the Astrophysical Journal. In this paper, we report the unexpected detection of X-rays from a radio pulsar in a binary system which appeared unlikely to emit high-energy radiation. We have also worked on Compton Gamma Ray Observatory data from 4U0115+63, which is the pulsar I discovered when I was a graduate student at MIT.

Although I am looking forward to returning to teaching at SSU half-time in the fall, I will still continue to be associated with SLAC on a half-time basis throughout next year. Mallory will be attending graduate school at Stanford, so we may continue working together. I encourage any SSU students who are interested in participating in this type of research to contact me in the fall when I return to campus. Update: Since the beginning of the Fall 1994 semester, Dr. Cominsky has been teaching half time at SSU and continuing her research at SLAC the other half of her time.

Graduation day, May 27, 1994, is a time of transition in the lives of seven physics majors at SSU.

Jeff Kavanaugh has accepted a research assistantship from the department of geophysics at the University of British Columbia to study glaciology. He will begin his research this summer atop a glacier in the Yukon! Mallory Roberts has accepted a fellowship from Stanford University to pursue a Ph.D. in physics. He will start research in the particle astrophysics group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) during the summer before his first quarter. David Lamb has accepted an assistantship in the physics Ph.D. program at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where he intends to study solid state physics or optics. Chuck Rogers will spend the summer as a camp counselor in the Appalachian Mountains. David Miller, who will graduate with a double major in physics and math, will be taking a break from the scholarly life to travel. He plans to enter a graduate program in 1995. Ian Holland plans to "catch a ride on the information super highway," possibly working for a fiber optics company in the area. And Lisa Christensen will enter the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) in June. This program will allow her to earn a Master of Arts in Education and a teaching credential in four quarters. Afterward she intends to teach physical sciences to high school students.

There were two graduates in January: Else Schmidt has since been promoted to engineer at Hewlett-Packard in Santa Rosa, and Suryadi Wijono is believed to have returned to Indonesia.

The physics program at SSU has proven to be excellent preparation for a myriad of life's paths. The students' success is due in part to the support and guidance of the faculty and staff in this department. Ultimately, however, success is achieved by the students, whose hard work and courage has made this graduation day something of which they can be proud.

Tired of breathing the stale air inside Darwin Hall, the SSU chapter of the Society of Physics Students ventured outdoors for many of its events this year. President Jeff Kavanaugh, Vice President Mallory Roberts, Secretary Lisa Christensen, and Treasurer Rebecca Freeman led the motley crew of physics ruffians through the year's adventures.

A fall camping trip to Fort Ross kicked off the year, and members enjoyed hiking, playing football, and climbing the sea cliffs. The local rock climbing community was stunned by the high technical difficulty of the ascents. Spring outings included a hike at Point Reyes national seashore and a bonfire at Goat Rock. At the bonfire, Jorge Polanco created what is thought by the scientific community to be the most evenly burnt piece of wood yet created, though his research continues today.

Several other events were held outside Darwin Hall as well. An evening was spent at the local pub studying the behavior of bubbles in glasses of beer. Several members visited the SRJC Planetarium, and found that the warm room and comfy chairs provided a much better research environment than the cold SSU Observatory. Despite the cold, the Public Viewing Nights at the observatory provided the SPS with an opportunity to sell refreshments to fund the traditional end-of-semester parties.

The SPS also sponsored some talks this year, including an informal talk with SSU alum Dan Nottingham. Dan spoke about a wide range of topics, including his pioneering work on SSU's Very Small Array and of his current work with polarimeters. Our own Vice President Mallory Roberts gave weekly classes about the VSA and various aspects of radio astronomy in general. Dr. Joe Tenn presented his popular lecture on how to get into graduate school for 1995 and 1996 graduates at the last meeting. Despite member protests, these talks were held inside Darwin Hall.

For those physics students interested in teaching, rather than safer work such as nuclear testing, here is a brief glimpse of the credential program from the eyes of a physics graduate. I believe that I can speak for all three of the physics credential candidates when I say that education classes are very different from physics courses. We have mixed feelings about which is more relevant, interesting and difficult. I know that I had expected everything to seem easy after Dr. Joe Tenn's mechanics course.

There are many challenges in the education courses. A lot of the work is in the form of producing portfolios. A portfolio is a collection of stuff that gives evidence of what you can do and what you have learned. Despite my best planning, the three I have completed have turned into a mad dash to bring things together on the last night.

At first these portfolios seemed like a pointless effort. It was not until my first job interview, where I was asked to bring a portfolio with me, that I saw that the effort had more meaning than just a grade.

The classes themselves hold my interest about 50% of the time. There is a lot of reading to do and very little problem solving. My favorite class so far is content reading and writing taught by Dr. Martha Ruddell. This is the first course that goes into specific teaching techniques in a thorough and organized way.

The majority of "real" learning to teach takes place in my student teaching classroom. My master teacher, Paul Eiserich at Petaluma High School, has taught me a great deal about how to teach and what to teach. The secret is lots of hands-on experiments and interesting demonstrations.

Believe it or not, I find myself missing those long hours of solving physics problems. Unfortunately, these problems and their solutions have yet to come up in the 9th grade physical science I am teaching. I miss physics courses in the same way I miss high school. I remember the good times but I'd never go back.

Current Accounts

With Dr. Sam Greene on sabbatical leave this spring, Dr. Saeid Rahimi took over the department's course in lasers and holography. This was the first time Dr. Rahimi taught the course, and he was the first to admit that the class was a learning experience for himself as well as his students. The class rolled along smoothly with the help of Steve Anderson, who is somewhat of an expert in this field.

Enrollment was high with 14 students, but everyone was accommodated, and all participated fully in each of the six major laboratory exercises. The class was split into several groups of two and three students, each of which worked on a separate experiment for two weeks, after which time everyone switched to another experiment. Each of the six experiments emphasized a different aspect of either the physical workings of lasers (as in external mirror alignment) or laser applications (such as spectroscopy, interferometry, and fiber optics). Perhaps the most popular exercise among the students was the creation of holograms, which was as much of an introduction to film development as it was to interference phenomena. Extra time allowed a few of the students to study the acousto-optic effect, in which information produced by an acoustic signal is transported along an optical beam.

A diode laser lab was added to the curriculum as a result of Dr. Rahimi's sabbatical last year at Hewlett-Packard. In addition to being highly efficient, diode lasers can be made very small, with dimensions on the order of microns. The future is bright for diode lasers because such small devices can be integrated with an electronic circuit, and the output of the laser can be easily coupled to a fiber optic cable. The goal of our experiment was to determine some simple characteristics of our devices by measuring the threshold current at which the diode laser would lase. This was a class that I had wanted to take ever since I saw the course description when I was in high school, and it was well worth the wait. In a fairly short amount of time we were able to learn the basics of how a laser can be used as a tool, and we had a bit of fun in the process. This was a course in a growing and exciting field, and the combined experiences of Dr. Rahimi and Steve Anderson contributed greatly to giving us a big picture of possible and probable future applications of lasers.

This year the "What Physicists Do" public lecture series continued for its 46th and 47th successful semesters. Every Monday at 4:00 p.m. speakers from industry, national labs, and universities come to Sonoma State to speak on such exciting topics as geophysics, environmental health, and new approaches to gathering astronomical data. The coffee and cookies offered with a smile by Miriam Carolin ('82) at 3:30 allow us to meet and talk with the speakers about companies, graduate schools, and current research. The lecture is the most relaxing time of the busy week for many. It allows the professors, the students, and people from the surrounding community to come together to talk to each other and to hear about exciting studies in many fields.

The lecture series has opened the eyes of many SSU physics majors to the different paths of study and work that are open after earning a degree in physics. The topics vary widely from week to week. Being interested in solid state physics and optics, I was delighted to listen to the lectures in those areas. These included Dr. Robin Cantor from Conductus, Inc., who spoke about SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) magnetometry and how these devices are helping doctors view the interior of a body without surgery. Dr. Robert Johnson came from the IBM Almaden Lab in San Jose to tell us about fullerenes, new forms of carbon in large geodesic dome-shaped molecules.

I also enjoyed Mary Howland's lecture on the design of aspheric and progressive lenses. Howland, who graduated in '86, now works for Signet Armorlite, Inc. in San Diego. She was one of four SSU physics graduates who returned to the campus this to talk about what they do in the real world. Dan Nottingham ('89) spoke on his study of the aurora as part of a Boston University research team. The day after the lecture Dan came to the Society of Physics Students meeting for an informal talk over pizza, where he gave his view of graduate school and what to expect.

In the fall Dr. Keyvan Farahani ('85) described applications of magnetic resonance imaging in guidance and monitoring of minimally invasive tumor therapy. Farahani is now on the faculty at UCLA, where he earned his Ph.D. after graduation from SSU. And just this month Lauren Novatne ('89) gave an exciting and well-illustrated account of her work as an environmental health specialist for Monterey County.

There were astronomical lectures by Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit of Yale, Dr. Sallie Baliunas of Harvard, Dr. Roger Malina of the University of California at Berkeley, and Dr. Paul Hodge of the University of Washington. The one I found the most interesting was on laser guide stars and adaptive optics by Dr. Claire Max of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She discussed how LLNL was using a powerful laser to excite upper atmospheric gases to provide a beacon on which to focus adaptive optics telescopes. The picture of the laser shooting up through the sky against the lights of the city was spectacular.

One of our own graduating seniors, Mallory Roberts, almost deserved a cover charge for the humor in his talk, "X-ray Outbursts from Neutron Stars in Binary Systems," which he claimed could have been titled, "What I Did to Get into Graduate School." Once again I and many others thoroughly enjoyed the speakers and topics. Dr. Tenn's potpourri of subjects has kept "What Physicists Do" interesting and entertaining. I look forward to next year's lectures and hope to see some old and new friends there.

Dr. Gordon Spear will be on sabbatical leave during the Fall 1994 semester. He intends to remain in the area and use the SSU Observatory to continue work begun with Ben Owen ('93) and Matt Davis ('93). The three have been developing the IRAS Catalog of Variable Sources. Dr. Spear will complete some publications, including the catalog itself, and work on enhancing software for analysis of the huge data set. One of the first publications will concern the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars at the infrared wavelength of 12 micrometers.

Physics major Mario Marckwordt has been selected to do research on quantum effects in semiconductor materials at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute this summer. An enthusiastic physics student, he is excited about the opportunity.

This year Sonoma State University upheld its tradition of observing the sky all over the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio, infrared, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray research were conducted by faculty and students. The optical observatory remained active throughout the year, but that is the subject of another article. What makes SSU rare among four- year colleges is the level of active research in what is sometimes called "invisible" astronomy.

On the long end of the spectrum, at the radio wavelength of 21 centimeters, is the experimentation done with the Very Small Array. This two-dish interferometer on the roof of Darwin Hall is the result of eight years of student and faculty work. Since the major hardware components were completed last year, this year's project leader, Mallory Roberts, decided to concentrate on the development of observing techniques and data analysis software. Software suitable for continuous meridian observations has been developed and has been used extensively during the Very Small Array Sky Survey which Mallory is doing as an independent study project. The results of this will be presented at the June meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Minneapolis. He is being aided by biology graduate student Naomi Owen. Meanwhile, Greg Madruga and Daniel Hale have been working on motor control routines and source-finding software. Amanda Tunison has also contributed with data backup help and minor hardware additions.

At a slightly shorter wavelength, Matt Davis ('93) and Professor Gordon Spear have continued their analysis of data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). The IRAS Catalogue of Variable Stars has been completed, and is now being put into publishable form. This multi-year project, started with Ben Owen ('93), has found thousands of new variable stars in the infrared, and has also allowed a new determination of the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars.

Getting into the short end of things, Prof. Lynn Cominsky and Mallory Roberts have published their discovery of X-rays from the Be-star/radio pulsar binary PSR1259-63. This system is the first radio pulsar to be found in an eccentric orbit around a massive main sequence companion star. X-rays were discovered near apastron, the point where the pulsar was farthest away from the Be companion. This goes against traditional explanations of X-ray emission mechanisms for this type of system. To explain this, Dr. Cominsky and Dr. Alan King of the University of Leicester have proposed a new model of wind accretion which proposes a much slower stellar wind from the Be-star than is usually assumed. This paper has also been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

On the extremely short end of things, Dr. Cominsky and Mallory have continued analysis of data from the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE). Their update of the orbital elements of the X-ray binary 4U0115+63 is currently being prepared for publication. They are also working on a long term light curve of 4U1700-377 in collaboration with the BATSE team at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama. Physics students at SSU who are interested in astrophysical research have unusual opportunities. Few other institutions have undergraduates actively involved in such a wide range of astrophysical research. There is much more to do in years to come.

The SSU Observatory has made several improvements this year which greatly expand our capabilities. The Observatory uses a CCD camera mounted on a computer-controlled 10-inch Newtonian telescope. The images are put on tape and taken across campus to the Imaging Lab, where the data are analyzed.

Private donations enabled the Department to buy a different mount for the Epoch automated telescope. The new mount is much more stable and tracks better than the old one, so it is now possible to take long exposures and still get crisp, clear images. This is a vast improvement over the original mount, which was not able to track reliably for exposures longer than than three minutes, limiting the objects which could be studied. Longer exposure times mean we can study fainter objects, including semi-regular variable stars. The hard drive on the CCD camera control computer was upgraded from a 20-megabyte drive to a 200-megabyte drive. The smaller disk could only store a small number of images, which interfered with long observing runs. The new drive can store hundreds of images, and so can hold several nights of observations. Data are less likely to be lost or corrupted because they stay on the disk while the tape backup is checked for accuracy.

Also new at the Observatory is updated control software for the Epoch automated telescope. The new software lets us create our own database to supplement the standard database already available. Observers can now put a coordinate file on disk before they go out to the observatory, saving time and reducing errors.

The enhanced equipment now available makes new observing programs possible. One of these will examine semi-regular variable stars, which have not been well studied in the past. In many cases even the period is not known, and the variable type classification is questionable. Observations will begin this summer with the goal of establishing light curves for these stars and determining the type of variable involved.

Future plans include making the Observatory remotely accessible by computer, so that observing runs can be conducted without having to make the lonely trek to a cold, faraway building. Currently observers must find an observing partner because it is against policy and common sense to walk alone to the dark, isolated area of campus where the Observatory is located. With a remotely accessible Observatory an observing run could be conducted from the warmth and safety of Darwin Hall, without need of a "bodyguard."

FRED ARIOLI ('75) is a software development engineer with Becton Dickinson in San Jose.