Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Fall 2015 Joint Meeting of the Texas Section of the AAPT, Texas Section of the APS and Zone 13 of the Society of Physics Students
Volume 60, Number 15
Thursday–Saturday, October 29–31, 2015; Waco, Texas
Session J3: Energy, Nuclear and General Physics |
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Chair: Christopher Thron, Texas A&M University-Central Texas Room: C.206 |
Friday, October 30, 2015 3:30PM - 3:42PM |
J3.00001: Comparison of Trends in Proxy Temperature Data with Measured Temperature Data Jim Roberts, James Otto In this work the changing patterns in tree ring growth, fluctuations in Greenland ice core and other proxy data samples have been compared \textbf{to determine }long term patterns in global temperature change. Temperatures \textbf{were }examined for the past 2000 years to test for long-term trends in the data. Signatures of warming trends have been identified that predate the Industrial Revolution. The goal of this work is to compare some randomly chosen proxy data sets during the last 2000 \textbf{for }trends over time to determine what ``cycles'' of warming and cooling the Earth has enjoyed over a significant period of years. Two intervals of time were considered, 200 to 1000 CE, a period ending near the Medieval Warming Period, and 1000 to 1800 CE, a period overlapping the Medieval Ice Age, to test for overall trends with a peak in temperature at 1000 CE assumed. The data were used to extrapolate a predicted global temperature from proxy data to be compared with actual measured temperature data for the recent 130 years. Two basic questions are tested: Is global warming a new thing? To what extent is humankind responsible for global warming? The patterns detected indicate that over decades the Earth temperatures have enjoyed numerous intervals of both global warming and global cooling while trending toward long-term lower temperatures until 1910 CE. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 30, 2015 3:42PM - 3:54PM |
J3.00002: Next Generation Manometer: Design of Speed of Sound Apparatus for NIST Oil Ultrasonic Interferometer Manometer Mary Zischkau, Jacob Ricker Among the four ultrasonic interferometer manometers (UIM) employed to maintain national pressure standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Low Pressure Manometry Laboratory, the oil UIM is in highest demand, calibrating approximately 75\% of the devices under test. The oil UIM operates from a range of 1 mPa to 140 Pa in absolute mode and uses Di-2-ethylhexyl sebacate (DEHS), a nontoxic liquid with a low vapor pressure, as the working fluid in comparison to the three other manometers that use mercury, a neurotoxin that is slowly being eliminated from use in the US. Currently, the oil UIM requires comparison with the mercury manometers in order to determine pressure measurement uncertainties since the speed of sound in oil has not been measured. A measurement of the speed of sound in DEHS eliminates the need for traceability to the mercury UIMs which will be phased out in the next 5 years in place of a new optical pressure standard. An apparatus was designed to determine the speed of sound by measuring change in the displacement and time of flight for ultrasound in DEHS using ultrasound and laser interferometry. The calculations and experiments performed with this apparatus will provide proof of concept for the next generation oil manometer. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 30, 2015 3:54PM - 4:06PM |
J3.00003: A cooling storage ring for an electron-ion collider James Gerity, Peter McIntyre Electron cooling is a two-species process for lowering the emittance of a beam of particles, providing a powerful pathway to higher luminosity in colliding beams. A first design of a 6 GeV/u storage ring for cooling ions as an augmentation to the Medium Energy Ion Collider (MEIC) is presented, along with some remarks on the particulars of electron cooling in this ring. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 30, 2015 4:06PM - 4:18PM |
J3.00004: Wiring of Drift Chamber 5 for COMPASS Lacey Medlock COMPASS is a fixed-target experiment at CERN and the first ever to examine polarized Drell-Yan events, which may help illuminate how the quark angular momentum contributes to the spin of the proton. The Drell-Yan events are produced using a 190 GeV pion beam on a proton target. In order to detect the muon pairs, a drift chamber was integrated into the COMPASS spectrometer, replacing an older straw chamber. The chamber consists of 23 parallel frames measuring 2.94 m by 2.54 m. Eight of those frames are anode frames with 20 micron sense wires and 100 micron field wires supplying voltage and relaying the signal received, with a total of 4616 wires. The wires are soldered very precisely in order to ensure high positional accuracy and to prevent arcing, as the wires are 4 mm apart. The wired frames are constructed such that there are four frames measuring horizontal and vertical position, and the remaining four frames measure with a ten degree offset in either the x or y direction to give a higher positional accuracy. To ensure detection accuracy and chamber longevity, the wires had to undergo many different tests, including electrical conductivity, tension testing, and alignment checking. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 30, 2015 4:18PM - 4:30PM |
J3.00005: Quantum Mechanics as the Outcome of an Accumulative Statistical Process Christopher Thron For a general quantum theory that is describable by a path integral formalism, we construct a mathematical model of a statistical accumulation-to-threshold process whose outcomes give predictions that are nearly identical to the given quantum theory. The model is neither local nor causal in spacetime, but is both local and causal is in a larger space which includes an additional dimension: the spacetime universe attains its observed configuration by means of a process in which the added dimension is the dynamical variable. The probabilistic nature of the squared wavefunction is a natural consequence of the model, and the model avoids conceptual difficulties encountered by other interpretations of quantum mechanics. We verify the model with simulations, and we discuss possible discrepancies from conventional quantum theory that might be detectable via experiment. Finally, we discuss the physical implications of the model. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 30, 2015 4:30PM - 4:42PM |
J3.00006: Thoughts on Entropy Douglas Moore Entropy is a concept that appears in a range of contexts such as thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. This talk discusses how entropy arises in information theory and how that relates to entropy in statistical mechanics. We also discuss the second law of thermodynamics in terms of dynamical systems and probability-preserving maps. [Preview Abstract] |
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