Department of Physics and Astronomy
"The Department of Physics and Astronomy is an undergraduate-only department which emphasizes research opportunities for undergraduates."
- The Department has a standard physics major plus two options: astronomy and computational physics
- The 6 tenure-track faculty do research in observational astronomy, space physics, theoretical plasma physics, and experimental atomic and solid state physics.
- The Department's Blue Mountain Observatory has public open houses in the summer, as well as serving as a laboratory for astronomy students.
Undergraduate Student Hilary Martens
Hilary Martens
Hometown: Missoula, MT
Research mentor/advisor: Dan Reisenfeld
Topic of research: Saturn's magnetosphere
Since the arrival of NASA's Cassini spacecraft at Saturn in 2004, students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy have had the opportunity to work with data from the spacecraft, under the guidance of Assistant Professor Dan Reisenfeld, member of the Cassini science team. Hilary Martens has been working with Dr. Reisenfeld for the past year and a half, studying Saturn's magnetosphere, the region of ionized gas, or plasma, trapped around Saturn by it's magnetic field. Many planets--including the Earth--have magnetospheres, but Saturn's is special because so much of its plasma originates from Saturn's moons and rings. Hilary has been investigating the distribution and energetics of water and molecular oxygen ions, trying to understand the source and evolution of these molecules. Her studies will help scientists understand the composition and origin of Saturn's rings and moons.
Undergraduate Student Tristan DeBorde
Research mentor/advisor: Andrew Ware
Topic of research: Diffusion in inhomogeneous systems
Tristan DeBorde, a senior in physics, started as an undergraduate research assistant in January, 2006. Tristan's topic of research is diffusion in inhomogeneous systems and how the second law of thermodynamics can place constraints on diffusion coefficients in such systems. This work is in onjunction with Professor Andrew Ware. Tristan has contributed to analytic calculations and he has written a numerical code in C++ in order to test the results of the analytic calculations. He presented the initial results of his work at the 2006 Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Plasma Physics in Philadelphia, October 29 - November 3, 2006.
