The National Science Foundation announced on March 30, 2016 that it has renewed a cooperative agreement with the University of Wisconsin–Madison to operate IceCube. The five-year, $35 million award entails the continued operation and management of the observatory located at NSF’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. In 2013, the IceCube Collaboration reported the first detection of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, opening a new astronomical vista on the universe and on some of its most violent phenomena.
News Archives
Energy – Physics 115 Summer 2016
Title:
Energy
Course Number:
115
Instructor:
Jeffrey Schmidt
Student Type:
Undergraduate
Course Description:
A one-semester introduction, focusing on a central concept: energy, energy sources, and the environment. Gives students the necessary physics background to form opinions on energy questions. The physical laws of thermodynamics, electricity, and magnetism, and nuclear physics in connection with energy related topics such as: thermal pollution, fossil power, fission and fusion, nuclear power, and solar power. Two lectures and one discussion per week.
Prerequisites:
Completion of QR-A. High school algebra and geometry. Not open to students who have taken Physics 103, 201, 207, or 247
Lecture Place and Time:
MTWR 10:20-11:10am, 2103 Chamberlin Hall
Lauren Laufman-Wollitzer Awarded WISE Grant
Undergraduate student Lauren Laufman-Wollitzer received a $4,000 grant from the UW Housing WISE (women in science and engineering) learning community to work in Prof. Cary Forest’s lab to further the understanding of shock formation, propagation, and dissipation in astrophysical plasmas. Lauren will build a compact toroid injector to accomplish the experiments.
Physics Majors Invited to Join Phi Beta Kappa
Five Physics majors have been invited to join Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honor society http://pbk.wisc.edu/. Students are invited to join on the basis of demonstrated achievement in breadth and depth of study in the liberal arts. The Wisconsin Chapter traditionally invites no more than three or four percent of the University’s bachelor’s degree candidates to join.
Our honorees are:
Zachary Briesemeister
Leah Fulmer
William Milner
Colin Wahl
Ruifeng Xie
Please congratulate them!
Students Create World-Changing Social Enterprises at the 2016 UW-Madison Hult Prize Competition
Josh Cherek and Team Metrecycle have advanced to the international competition after taking top place in the 2nd Annual Hult Prize Competition at the Wisconsin School of Business. The team consisting of Josh Cherek, Jennifer Sharpe, Alex Valaitis, and Luke VandenLangenberg will now compete at the Hult Prize regional finals in March 2016 hosted by one of Hult International Business School’s five campuses in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai or Shanghai.
BadgerLoop wins 3rd in SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition
A team of University of Wisconsin—Madison engineering students won 3rd place overall in a worldwide competition to design a pod for shuttling people on a futuristic high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop. The team will build its test pod in a workspace in Chamberlin Hall. Professor Duncan Carlsmith awarded BadgerLoop a mini grant from the Garage Physics makerspace to develop and prototype the pod system.
Danny Crow Wins Teaching Assistant Award
Danny Crow, Ph.D. candidate in condensed matter theory, has been awarded a 2015 L&S Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Award!
Once More, Into the Breach
In 1986 and 1988 Henry (Heinz) Barschall, a respected nuclear physicist at the University of Wisconsin, editor of Physical Review C and what was then the APS Publications Oversight Committee, wrote articles in Physics Today that presented the results of a study of the cost of library subscriptions to physics journals. The consequences of Barschall’s studies provide a cautionary tale on what can go wrong when scientific and commercial interests collide.
Prof. Peter Timbie wins Faculty Development Grant
Prof. Peter Timbie will work on new materials for Physics 103-104 in conjunction with the REACH program during Fall 2016.
Prof. Duncan Carlsmith wins Kemper K. Knapp Bequest for Garage Physics
Professor Duncan Carlsmith has been awarded a $6000 from the Kemper K. Knapp Bequest for Garage Physics. The Knapp Bequest favors projects that cross departmental lines and have an impact on the educational and cultural life of the university community, particularly projects that benefit undergraduate students.