Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keir Ashby and Dr. Darin Ragozzine, Department of Physics and Astronomy Introduction For centuries, humans have imagined if there are other worlds like ours and how we would be able to find them. Today, we are closer than ever to discovering the answer. In 2009 scientists launched the Kepler Space Telescope with the object of […]

Scott Crossen and Dr. John Colton, Department of Physics and Astronomy Introduction Thin film photovoltaics are a promising candidate in the search for cheap, efficient solar cells. In particular, cadmium telluride is one of the most widely-used materials for this application because of its leading dollar-per-watt ratio and high efficiency of around 22.3%. However, for […]

Michael Greenburg and Dr. Steven Turley, Department of Physics and Astronomy Introduction The effects of small surface irregularities on a mirror’s reflectivity are fairly easy to calculate, but roughness on the same order of size as the wavelength of incident light disallows the use of some simplifying approximations. As a result, the effects of such […]

Caleb Goates. Dr. Kent Gee and Dr. Tracianne Neilsen, Department of Physics and Astronomy Introduction Where is that sound coming from? Acoustic beamforming is a method to determine just that, by recording sound simultaneously with several microphones and finding the delay between the signals. But beamforming can do more than point in the direction sound […]

Tyler Bahr and Dr. Mark Transtrum, Department of Physics and Astronomy Introduction The foundational model of voltage spiking in neurons, formulated by Hodgkin and Huxley in 1952, is composed of 4 dynamical variables and 25 parameters. The sheer complexity of the basic neuron model is a key issue which makes neural simulations computationally expensive. We […]

Kameron Hansen and Dr. John Colton, Department of Physics and Astronomy Ferritin (FTN) is a spherical protein shell used nearly ubiquitously across life to store and transport iron in a non-toxic form. Ferritin’s natural occurring ferrihydrite mineral (Fe(O)OH) can be removed, leaving behind a hollow interior that conveniently serves as a template for researchers to […]

Adam Bugg and Dr. Eric Hintz, Department of Physics and Astronomy Cepheids and δ-Scuti stars are two kinds of pulsating variable stars. Variable stars are so called because their brightness in the sky changes with time, following a regular period. In astronomy, variable star research is often done using a method called photometry, in which […]

Joe Rivest, McKay Osborne, and Dr. Joseph Moody, Department of Physics and Astronomy Introduction We’ve studied the light curve of the blazar object, Markarian 501 (Mrk 501). This project is important because it helps refine the still developing standard model of a galactic nucleus and could aid the search for binary black holes. Blazars are […]