Summer 2011 Research

After a long, beautiful hibernation, we are back with this summer’s physics research!

This summer we’ve got students and professors working in New York, Chicago, Colorado, New Mexico, and Idaho.  Not bad for a physics department from small-town west Texas.  Most of our work falls under the umbrella of nuclear physics by studying the structure of the proton and directly measuring nuclear fission processes.  We also have students who have recently worked on various research projects in medical physics, homeland security, and optics just to name a few.  Of course, the research experience helps our graduates go off to a huge array of different fields in physics, engineering, education, and computing.

My plan is to let you hear directly from the students about their summer research experiences, so for the first time I am posting a copy of our weekly newsletter: the Doings ANd Goings On (DANGO) of the ACU Physics department.  Since our group is quite literally scattered across the country, we have the students and professors write a weekly status update for the DANGO newsletter.  By our records, this is the 17th year of DANGO (and the 30th year of nuclear physics research at ACU).

Research is an inherently messy process.  The User’s Center here at Brookhaven National Lab has a poster with quote from Einstein on the wall:

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research”

DANGO captures it all.  The joy and the sorrow.  The triumphs and the suffering.  The work and the play.  The serious and the not-so-serious.  The difficult process of doing something which has never been done before.  And you’re welcome to come along for the ride.

Click on the link to download:  DANGO 2011 – Issue #1

-Dr. D