SFA
Physics, Astronomy and Engineering News
September 27, 2005
Department Seminars
(Let's try this again Rita!)

Title: "Carbon Nanotubes: Structure and Applications" by Jonathan Below

Title: "Dark Energy" by Tim Rothenbush

Time: 4:00 PM on Thursday, September 29, 2005

Place: Science Room 334

All students and faculty are welcome to attend. Refreshments will be served.

Engineering Design

Physics 315 students were asked to render this real scene below using Povray.

Here are their results:

The Persistence of Vision Raytracer (Povray) is a high-quality, free tool for creating three-dimensional graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows, Mac OS/Mac OS X and i86 Linux. With Povray students gain some programming experience as well as a greater understanding of vectors operations in 3D. More to come...

SFA Observatory - Open Friday
Viewing Session - This Friday at 8:00pm

The observatory will be open to the public on the following days at 8:00pm weather permitting:

Friday, September 30th
Friday, October 28th

If we do not have electricity at the observatory the skies will be a bit darker. :-) In this case we will just use the portable telescopes and flashlights.

The Society of Physics Students may sponsor this event and we may have a bus that will leave from the Stone Fort Museum on campus. I'll have more news later on this.

With power outages you may have noticed that you can see stars and constellations better at night. Venus shines brightly in the west-southwest just before sunset. It's second in brightness only to the moon after sunset. You will also be able to see Jupiter to the lower right of Venus with your naked eye. Mars rises at 9:00pm. It is near "opposition" so you should see it as a reddish star-like object directly overhead at midnight.

In addition to our public viewing session at the SFA Observatory you may also want to attend a planetarium show on a Friday night. Here's the planetarium schedule: http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/planetarium/index.htm

TAMU

On September 1, 2005, Texas A&M University will begin to accept transfer applications for the Spring of 2006. The application deadline for US Citizens/Permanent Residents is October 15, 2005. The application is available at http://www.applytexas.org/.

Transfer applicants are encouraged to review TAMU's Transfer Guide. The Transfer Guide is available online at: http://www.tamu.edu/admissions/transfer_guide_2005.pdf. To be eligible for transfer admission, applicants must have 24 semester hours of graded transferable coursework and a 2.5 GPA by the application deadline.

Sincerely,
Sean Cargo
Prospective Student Advisor

Contributors' Links
More news from newsletter recipients

Hurricanes and Galaxies
http://astro.sfasu.edu/20050923/galaxy-hurricane.html

E=mc2 Day!
September 27th is the 100th anniversary of Einstein's publication of the world's most famous equation E=mc2. Read Einstein's paper on E=mc2:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/e_mc2.pdf

I use a hook on the wall in my garage and line it up with the back edge of the passenger window to help me determine when my truck is in the garage far enough. Is this parallax parking?

Cool Cartoon
http://www.fabrica.it/flipbook/flipbook_player.php?id=1119823941-69151250219
Make your own animation: http://www.fabrica.it/flipbook/

Deep Impact Results
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov

Download Books for Free (Pre-1923 and Public Domain)
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/en

Scholarships and Employment Opportunities

Consider teaching labs for our department or teaching at the high school or college level in your future. For more info see your professors and http://www.aapt.org/

SFA Opportunities

Other Opportunities

Thanks to Walter Trikosko and others for the links and information above. Feel free to send any interesting links that you find. This email message is sent to students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends of the department. If you would like to be removed from the emailing list or are getting multiple copies of these newsletters, then feel free to reply to this message with your request.

Clear skies,
Dan Bruton
astro@sfasu.edu

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