Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Spring 2017 Meeting of the APS New England Section, held jointly with NanoWorcester
Volume 62, Number 5
Friday–Saturday, April 14–15, 2017; Worcester, Massachusetts
Session D2: Applied Physics and Physics History |
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Chair: Richard Price, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Room: Olin Hall 107 |
Saturday, April 15, 2017 10:15AM - 10:20AM |
D2.00001: Opening Remarks |
Saturday, April 15, 2017 10:20AM - 10:40AM |
D2.00002: Anthony Philip French (1920-2017) Physics Teacher Charles H Holbrow Tony French made major contributions to the teaching of physics. He was a skilled lecturer, a thoughtful user and deviser of lecture demonstrations, author of five valuable textbooks, and a leader in the American and international communities of physics educators. I will briefly review highlights of his interesting life and then present in some detail his ideas for changes in physics education. He maintained that physics instruction should always build up from experimental observations. He also had a particular affection for classical mechanics, but as he came to recognize that its underlying Newtonian ideas are profoundly wrong, he became a strong advocate of changing the content of the introductory physics course to include relativity and quantum phenomena. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 15, 2017 10:40AM - 11:00AM |
D2.00003: Estimation of Atmospheric Aerosol Extent William Tuxbury, Chris Oville, Jalal Butt, James Kulowiec, Nimmi Sharma Data from two different instruments were combined to derive estimates of atmospheric aerosol extent for multiple evenings in the New England region. The vertical extent of atmospheric aerosols impacts atmospheric chemistry and dynamics and is an important input for atmospheric modeling studies. At Central Connecticut State University (CCSU), laser light pulses were transmitted vertically into the atmosphere and the intensity of the laser side-scatter from atmospheric aerosols and air molecules was measured. In addition data were obtained from balloon-borne direct sampling instruments within 175 miles of CCSU and within less than 5 hours of the laser intensity data. This study used analytical methods to improve upon preliminary visual estimates of vertical aerosol extent from the datasets. Methods employed include primarily numerical derivatives and differentiating functions that were curve fit to sets of data. Aerosol extent estimates from the different datasets are compared. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 15, 2017 11:00AM - 11:20AM |
D2.00004: Laser Measurements of Air-Entrained Asian Dust Jalal Butt, Nimmi C.P. Sharma, John E. Barnes Light Detection And Ranging (Lidar) is a remote sensing technique used to measure and profile the atmosphere. Lidar achieves this through the detection of laser-light scatter off aerosols, air molecules, and clouds. A CCD Camera lidar (CLidar) was employed at Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO), an atmospheric baseline station in Hawaii, to profile the atmosphere. During the spring, Eastern Asian dust activity intensifies significantly, generating a high level of dust in the near-ground air. Some of this dust becomes entrained in circulating air, and is then lofted and transported by prevailing winds across the Pacific Ocean and over MLO. CLidar measurements of aerosol scattering during spring months revealed extinction peaks at mid-range altitudes. Back trajectories of air parcels from the altitude and location of observed aerosol peaks were calculated and origins coincided with known dust sources. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 15, 2017 11:20AM - 11:40AM |
D2.00005: A Unified Proposal for Intervals between Events in Space-time Douglas Sweetser A Universe with one observer is easy: the chosen one could measure two events, record the difference between time and distance, and retire having no one with whom to quarrel. Introduce a second observer and two deeply different but successful theories are needed. If one observer is traveling at a constant velocity relative to the other, then special relativity characterizes how one observer analyzes the other based on the Poincaré group. Yet if the two observers are at fixed distances from a gravitational source - thus being non-inertial - general relativity is used to understand how the other's observations look. GR has a Lagrange density that when varied with respect to a metric tensor, creates ten non-linear, second order differential equations. Yet both SR and GR say that Nature leaves one's own local measurements alone. Both detail how one observer can look from afar at the other observer and detail how those changes look different to him. The foundations of SR and GR could not be more different. The quaternion gravity proposal adds the multiplication operator to the manifold of events in space-time. I argue that different symmetries of a quaternion squared is sufficient to explain what one observer can say about the other observer's measurements. [Preview Abstract] |
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