SFA
Physics, Astronomy and Engineering News
October 3, 2005
Department Seminars

Title: "Microscopic Description of the Breathing Mode and Nuclear Compressibility"
         by Carson Fuls SPS Meeting

Title: "The Neutrino Problem - Recent Findings"
         by Brian Mahoney

Time: 4:00 PM on Thursday, October 6, 2005

Place: Science Room 334

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

A Society of Physics Students meeting will follow the seminars.

Tutors Wanted

The Athletic Academic Center is currently in need of tutors in a variety of academic fields. (The pay is really good I hear.)

Criteria: "We prefer tutors who have mastery of an academic field, with minimum overall/field of study GPS of 3.0. Junior, Senior, and Graduate student are highly encouraged to apply."

Areas Include: AST105, PHY101, PHY110

Contact: Stephanie McDonald or Jared Gould at 468-4484 or 4429 or mcdonaldsg@sfasu.edu

Contributors' Links
More news from newsletter recipients

SFA Observatory Help Needed: There will be small groups of visitors at the observatory on the next 2 Friday's at 8pm. As one of our majors you are welcome to drive out to the observatory for star gazing on these night - and we could use a little help too. Here's a map: http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/observatory/tour_form.html

Need help in your CHE, MTH, EGR or other course?
If so, you can get free help in the library. Here are the times and room numbers:
http://libweb.sfasu.edu/aarc/SuppInstr/fall05_groups.htm

The Da Vinci Glow
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/04oct_leonardo.htm?list184210

Jarvis Christian College "We are planning a Star Party for November 12, 2005 here at Jarvis Christian College at 5:00 - 9:30 PM. Our Astronomy staff of one is Dr. Ignatius Okafor. We would like to network with you and your staff." -- Harvey Rayson, Ed.D. (SFA gradate), Chair, Division of Education, Hawkins is NE of Tyler on Hwy 80 and 2015.

Ryan Williams writes: "This may be the best recitation of pi by a cardboard robot I have ever heard, though not completely educational it can be entertaining."
http://www.keithschofield.com/pi/std.html

"Its a puzzle, or a series of riddles rather. The objective is to advance through the levels, the only way to advance through the levels is to make the right corrections to the URL, or to find a clickable region within the picture which will then prompt you to enter an username and password. The username and password can be found using hints within the picture. Most of them, however, can be solved by making the right corrections to the source code. Another important thing to remember is to check the source code. The person who runs this sight puts cryptic hints in the source code. Good luck. I'm stuck on level 7" -- Nathan
http://www.frvade.com

Mars Doubles in Brightness
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/22sep_doublemars.htm

The Return of the Chicken Cam
http://www.subservientchicken.com/

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...

Hurricanes and Galaxies

Galaxies are to Stars, as Hurricanes are to What?

Our Sun is about 1,390,000 km in diameter. The Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light-years or 946,055,000,000,000,000 km in diameter.

This is a 1 to 680,615,107,913 ratio in size.

Hurricane Rita is 370 miles or 595 km in diameter. So how big would a "star" in Rita be?

This size of this object would be (595 km / 680,615,107,913) ~ 1 micron.

A 1 micron dust grain is big enough to form the heart of a raindrop.

Therefore...

Stars : Galaxies : : Dust : Hurricanes

or...

Solar Systems : Galaxies : : Raindrops : Hurricanes

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

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, Norm Markworth, Ryan Williams, Nathan Phetteplace 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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