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Looking for next year’s SDAs!
Juniors, are you interested in serving the department as an SDA (Student Departmental Advisor) next year?
The official blurb is below, but basically you serve as peer advisors about the major to people in their first couple of years, and help ease the lives of the majors. This year the SDAs are Ann Isaacs and Marshall Basson. You could ask them how they spend their time (which varies even between the two of them).We need to choose SDAs soon, so please email Marty at mbaylor@carleton.edu to express interest.Please send a short note about why you want to do this, and in particular what perspective you might bring, including — say— having studied abroad one or more times— non-traditional track through the major— physics and pre-med/physics and engineering … etcEach year, one or two seniors serve departments (or programs) as SDAs. These Student Departmental Advisers help inform students about courses, prerequisites, college and departmental requirements, and so supplement information and advice available through advisers and published materials. It is now time to identify SDAs for 2020-21.
A complete description of the responsibilities of SDAs can be found here. The specific roles that SDAs play vary significantly from one department to another. But, in general, one might think of a good SDA as a student who:
–knows the department and its curriculum well,
–is responsible,
–communicates clearly with both students and faculty,
–would represent the department well as an “ambassador” to other students, job candidates and other visitors,
–is enthusiastic and eager to be a “booster” for the department.
The only College-wide requirements are that all SDAs must:
–have a 3.0 GPA and
–be in residence and enrolled throughout their senior year (it is possible to make exceptions to this policy in the case of departments or programs with very few senior majors/concentrators).
SDAs will have to be available for a brief orientation during New Student Week in the fall. The exact date and time will be announced to all newly selected SDAs this May.
Note that SDAs serve the College as volunteers.
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APS Virtual April Meeting
APS’s March Meeting was canceled because of the pandemic, but you can now register to attend for free the virtual April meeting!
Registration is Now Open for the APS Virtual April Meeting
Registration is now open for the APS Virtual April Meeting, which will be held online April 18 – 21, 2020. Attendance is free of charge and open to both APS members and non-members, but registration is required to attend.
If you previously registered for the 2020 April Meeting you will need to register again.
When you register, you will have access to: - Streamed live presentations and the ability to ask questions
- Pre-recorded talks, presentation slides, and posters
- The opportunity to engage with other participants via video chat (one-on-one or in groups of up to 50)
- Chat with our exhibitors, APS departments, and Physical Review editors
- The Snowmass Town Hall and APS Unit Business Meetings
This is our inaugural virtual conference, and we are excited for this opportunity to share and be inspired by the latest research from around the world. Along with three live plenary sessions, choose from over 150 live sessions and events or view on-demand content including posters and pre-recorded talks that span more than 20 units.
View the scientific program for the most up-to-date schedule. Please note that the full virtual April Meeting website will open later this week.
Can’t attend live? The majority of the live presentations will be available for viewing on-demand.
Presenters: Instructions for giving a live talk and/or uploading your presentation slides, poster, or a pre-recorded talk will be provided later this week.
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Physics Table
Join us for a virtual Physics Table! We had about a dozen or so folks join us last week. Mostly we showed off our pets. Who knows what will happen this week? Tune in tomorrow (Tuesday the 14th) at Noon Central time!
Physics TableTuesday, April 14⋅12:00 – 1:00pmWeekly on Tuesday, until Jun 9, 2020Join Zoom Meeting https://carleton.zoom.us/j/568501808 Meeting ID: 568 501 808
One tap mobile +12532158782,,568501808# US
+13017158592,,568501808# US
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Recent Alumni Presentations
Hey, y’all–
We’ve got a group of recent alumni who volunteered to zoom in and talk to you about what they’re up to right now. The first one we’ll hear from is Stephen Kuenstner, who is part of the team that imaged a black hole for the first time in history! Below is a title and abstract that describes some of his current research. If you’d like to tune in this Thursday, April 16 at noon, here’s how to connect:
Zoom Link (Thursday): https://stanford.zoom.us/j/97730479694?pwd=OGJpbzNwbzcva0ZmaWRpVElOU3VRdz09
Zoom password: 884353
Using superconducting quantum sensors to search for dark matter
Abstract: We have abundant indirect evidence for the existence of dark matter, an unknown substance that provides the gravitational binding to hold our galaxy (and every other galaxy) together. However, no one has ever directly measured any of the fundamental properties of dark matter – the dark matter’s mass, spin, and interactions with Standard Model particles are totally unknown! In this talk, I’ll describe why dark matter researchers are so confident that dark matter exists, in spite of decades of null results from dozens of careful experiments. Then I’ll focus on a particular family of dark matter models, where dark matter consists of very light particles, each with a mass of less than about 1micro-eV/c^2, or about one-trillionth the mass of an electron. These particles have electromagnetic interactions with Standard Model particles, so dark matter passing through Earth-based detectors should deposit energy in the form of electromagnetic signals. However, since these interactions are so weak, the amount of power available to detect is typically less than a yocto-Watt (10^-24 Watts, approximately 10 billion times weaker than a typical cell phone signal). The only feasible way to detect such tiny signals is with extremely low temperature (~10mK) detectors. In fact, the signals are so weak that even the tiny quantum fluctuations added by amplification need to be minimized. In my lab, we use superconducting quantum sensors as extremely sensitive amplifiers, which add as little noise as possible to the tiny dark matter signal. By further improving the performance of these amplifiers, we will be able to dramatically increase the sensitivity of our dark matter detector.