SDSU Physics - Student Research
Student research in the Department of Physics
- Student Research.
- Physics major (B.S.) Senior Thesis Requirements.
- Suggested senior thesis projects.
- Physics M.S. Thesis Information.
- Summer Research experiences of undergrads.
- Digital Thesis Archive.
Research Experience of Undergraduates
A number of our students have gone to REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) which are sponsored by the National Science Foundation for summer research:
The list of REU sites can be found here. (Our Dept. of Astronomy also hosts an REU).
Student reports on their REU experience
- Van Nguyen (University of Washington, 2004)
- Brian Chapler (Florida State, 2005)
- Matt Meixner (Notre Dame, 2005)
Student reports on other summer experience
Non-NSF summer research away:
- Phil Rosenfield (Universitaet Giessen, Germany, 2005)
A Physics Major’s Summer (Away from Summer School!)
Written by Van Nguyen
“I want you to do an REU[1] this summer.”
Those were the words my mentor, Dr. Calvin Johnson, said to me during the fall semester of 2003. At that time, my first thoughts were, “He wants to get rid of me this summer. He’s finally sick of me.” In Dr. Johnson’s defense, he did say things like, “This will be a great experience. And it will look great on your graduate applications.” Of course, I knew that these words were just a cover up for his “ulterior motive.” But it was this “ulterior motive” that led to the most fun I’d ever had in a summer.
My first task was to decide which schools to apply to. After hours of searching on the Internet, I found some good schools that actually a) had a summer physics REU program and b) had projects dealing with computational physics, my general area of interest. After hours and hours of tedious application-filling, it was time to daydream where I would go for the summer and oh yeah, continue with class work. (Note on the applications: ask professors for letters of recommendation at least 2-3 weeks before they are due as a courtesy. Trust me, your letter will be better if you do). The more I daydreamed about my grand REU plans, the more I realized that I would be lucky and happy to go to any of the 7 schools I ended up applying to. After all, what’s not to like? A typical summer physics REU lasts about 10 weeks and pays you $3000-$4000 on top of housing and food. Why didn’t somebody tell me about REUs earlier?
In spring 2004, I heard from all the schools I had applied to and it was time to make a decision. I ended up choosing the school that I had heard from first: the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, none other than the school where Dr. Johnson got his Ph. D. Everyone has their own preferences, but my reasons for choosing UW were pretty simple:
1) I’d spoken to the director of the program via email and on the phone, and he was extremely nice.
2) I was really interested in possibly going to graduate school there. (This turned out to be the most important reason of all. To all you physics undergraduates out there, do an REU at one of your graduate school candidates. You could end up putting a really big gold star next to it on your list or crossing it off. Either way, it’s good to find out).
3) I wanted to see what Seattle’s like since I’d heard it doesn’t rain there in the summer.
4) Dr. Johnson went there and really enjoyed it (and “strongly suggested” it).
I arrived in Seattle in the middle of June, and it was very rough at the beginning – I didn’t know anyone there. But by the end of week 2, I was having a really good time. It was amazing to become friends with a bunch of other fellow physics students that came from all over the country. (We still keep in touch). On top of that, I was very fortunate to be matched up with a great mentor on a project I became quickly interested in. I worked with Dr. Joseph Formaggio on behalf of the SNO collaboration on data analysis involving muon followers. I learned a tremendous amount doing research at the Nuclear Physics Laboratory (NPL) at UW – it sure beat the heck out of taking summer school!
Alas, 10 weeks went by extremely quickly (there must be a physical equation/explanation for time speeding up during the summer and slowing down during the fall and spring.). The only “hard” part about the REU was giving a 15-minute talk and writing a paper at the end, which are typical requirements for REUs. But really, it wasn’t hard. During my last few days in Seattle at the end of August, it rained miserably and constantly, but had been sunny almost the entire two months before. Something told me that summer was over in Seattle…and it was time to go home.
Looking back now, I can honestly say that my only regret is not being able to do an REU this summer since I will have graduated in May 2005. But I could do another summer REU if I decided to extend my undergraduate studies for another year. (thinking…)
Nah, REUs are great, but graduating is greater.
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
By Brian Chapler
Department of Physics
This summer
I was lucky enough to be accepted in the Research Experience for Undergraduates
program (REU) at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory operated by
My specific
project involved an experimental technique using Tunnel Diode Oscillators (TDO)
and designing an isolation chamber for the TDO circuit. The purpose of the chamber was to reduce
noise due to fluid flow (N, He) around the circuit. This noise reduction
is a necessity if one desires to investigate a sample using TDO by varying the
temperature in a constant magnetic field.
I was required to give
Not only
was able to work at the home of the worlds most powerful magnet, I was also
able to experience some of what
I would have to say my favorite thing about the REU program was actually getting paid to do physics. It makes one feel like all the suffering one goes through as a physics major is starting to pay off, and your some people think your brain might actually be worth something. It feels pretty good not to be worthless.
All in all, the REU program is a perfect way to make some easy money, see a different part of the country, and learn physics in a new environment; not to mention it looks great on graduate school applications. I would encourage any undergraduate science major to fill out as many FREE applications as necessary and get into one of the many REU programs across the country.
My Summer REU Experience
By: Matt Meixner
Department of Physics
The NSF funds summer research programs at a multitude of universities across the country. These programs are called Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and they provide an opportunity to participate in research that is currently being conducted by active members in the physics community.
This past summer (2005) I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the REU program held by the Notre Dame physics department. It was a 10 week paid summer research internship. The department offered research opportunities in a wide range of disciplines; from Nuclear Particle physics to Theoretical Astrophysics. The field I chose to participate in was in the area of High Energy Particle physics, under the guidance of Professor Mike Hildreth.
During the
month prior to my arrival at Notre Dame my mentor was busy taking data with his
research group at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) located in
The summer was not just spent doing research everyday. On the weekends we would go into the nearby towns and find interesting things to do. For example, one weekend we got to go to the local fair and watch pigs race and swim around a track. Another weekend we went white water rafting and another one was spent on a barge out in the middle of a lake while we went inner tubing and water skiing. But the thing that made the summer for me was the people I spent it with. These were really some of the most interesting people I have ever met, and I really enjoyed spending my time with them.
At the end of the summer you have to give a talk on your research that you conducted and also write some sort of paper (a link to my paper can be found here http://www.physics.nd.edu/Pdf/2005%20REU%20Papers/Meixner.pdf). But do not let this discourage you it is actually not that bad; besides it gives you the opportunity to do research away from your department and you get to see a new part of the country.I have to confess that this was one of the best summers of my life and I will never forget the people that I met nor will I forget the things we did that summer. I highly recommend choosing the Notre Dame REU program because they offer a wide range of research topics and it is a well established and highly effective program. But try to apply to as many as you can because it really is an experience of a lifetime.
Summer in Giessen
Phil Rosenfield
Thanks to Dr. Fridolin Weber of SDSU, Dr. Horst Lenske of the Institut fur Theoretische Physik I at the Justus Leibig Universitat in Giessen,Germany, and Dr. Karlheinz Langanke at Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung (GSI), Germany and the SDSU Study Abroad office, I was able to travel to Giessen, Germany and study density dependent relativistic hadron field (DDRH) theory applications to the equation of state for neutron stars.
With little experience in nuclear physics, I spent my first month reading excerpts from text books along with many papers and completing a few assignments to acquaint myself with the relativistic description of infinite nuclear matter and the shift to momentum space and then to density dependent coupling constants to be able to learn about the equation of state in neutron stars.
Aside from the physics, I had never been with such a diverse group of both nice and interesting people. One weekend night after the coordination through email and text messaging, I glanced around our table at a local bar (serving Licher beer from a town 5km away, much better than the Giessener brew) and found representatives from the following countries: Mongolia, Scotland, Bulgaria, Hungry, Italy, Romania, Ukraine, Spain, and of course, Germany. Luckily for me, English was the common language. The colloquiums were all given in English and throughout the summer, I started to understand nearly 60% of their content. The PhD student between Dr. Lenske and I was Christof Kiel, he loaned me his girlfriends old bike which proved indispensable in Giessen, a town of 80,000, 50,000 of which I was told were students at the University.
Unlike my experience as an undergrad and now as an Astronomy graduate student, these students rarely worked on the weekends or even far into the night. Wednesdays were football (soccer) games and I explored nearby towns on the weekends, sometimes with other foreign students.
The goal of the summer was not just to learn physics, but to use the DDRH theory's equation of state data to allow for strangeness in rotating neutron/quark stars using Dr. Weber's code. The data from Giessen proved hard to reproduce, and the code is currently being rewritten (by a new friend Urnaa). For now, I have the data published to deal with along with memories of one of my best, most interesting summers.
I feel a great debt of gratitude to everyone who made it possible.
Obligatory disclaimer
Last updated: 10th August 2006