Physics & Astronomy

College of Engineering and Physical Sciences

Society of Physics Students

Faculty Advisor - Dr. Jesse Feddersen

President - Alex Schultz

Vice President -  Brock Parker

Secretary - Michael Lindman

Treasurer - Silba Dowell

Upcoming Events:

SPS Meetings: First meeting Wednesday February 24th @ 2:00pm, then every other Wednesday of Spring '21

See SPS emails for location of meetings. 

 

SPS Lecture Series:

To Be Announced

SPS Students Explore Work Experiences:

Some Useful Links to websites for students looking for work experience/internships:

-     Summer Jobs can be explored on The Nucleus - https://www.compadre.org/student/research/

-     SPS listing of jobs on -  http://jobs.spsnational.org/jobs/

-     Careers using physics can be explored on -  http://www.spsnational.org/cup/

-     Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium has funds for research and internships - http://wyomingspacegrant.uwyo.edu/ForCollegeStudents.asp

Comments provided by several of our current physics and astronomy students associated with their work and research experience:

Eric Cameron says:  My 10 week internship during the summer of 2013 was with NASA at Johnson Space Center, which was funded under the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium. The project that I worked on was refurbishing and calibrating a reverberation chamber which was mostly applied electrical engineering.  Most important for getting help with such internships is to talk to Shawna (the Associate Director) about your interests as she is the one with connections and can move the applications forward and put in a good word for students.

In addition, Eric has enjoyed tutoring through tutor.com, where students can apply by going to www.tutor.com and click on the tab for tutors, then there is a button to apply and all of the information is there.

Tyler Beau Yeik says:  The organization that I interned with over the summer of 2013 was with Quasar Federal Systems in San Diego, California. The research that I assisted with included market research for a passive metal detector and stray voltage detection as well as the predominant project, detecting electrical fields in thunderstorms through sensors mounted on UAVs. Thanks to the initiative of Dr. Dale (Dept. Head), I was not dependent upon online internship searches.

Rachel Smullen says:  The most helpful site I used to get started on the internship search was the NSF site: http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/reu_search.jsp.  I spent the summer of 2012 in Charlottesville, VA at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.  I used VLA observations to identify formaldehyde in nearby starburst galaxies.  Formaldehyde is a very accurate tracer of neutral hydrogen, which itself is very difficult to observe.  This was a proof of concept survey which will soon be applied to nearly fifty other starburst galaxies and can be extended to find neutral hydrogen in other types of galaxies.  NRAO sent us on trips to see the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the VLA in Socorro, NM.  We also got time on the VLA and on the VLBA to conduct our own research projects.  I spent the summer of 2013 in Tucson, AZ at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.  I used Hubble Space Telescope images to find satellite galaxies around ESO 243-49, a spiral galaxy hosing the first intermediate-mass black hole ever found.  Because we think that this intermediate-mass black hole is the remnant of a dwarf satellite galaxy, we need to study the satellites of ESO 243-49 to better characterize the environment in which the progenitor dwarf galaxy formed.  This work currently has follow-up spectroscopy being taken to confirm my two candidate satellite galaxies.  NOAO took us to Kitt Peak, AZ, home of many of the US's best telescopes, Sunspot, NM, home of the National Solar Observatory, Apache Point, home of the Sloan Telescope, and Socorro, NM for the VLA (again).  We were given 14 nights on the Kitt Peak 2.1m telescope to perform our own research.