Chaos in General Relativity: Spinning Particle Orbits

by

Christopher Verhaaren and Dr. Eric Hirschmann, Department of Physics and Astronomy General relativity, our current theory of gravity, has been complicating physics since 1916. After replacing Newton’s comparatively simple theory of gravity, relativity has predicted one nonintuitive gravitational effect after another. As one example, gravitational radiation is an effect unique to general relativity. The theory […]

Titan as a Laboratory for Linear Dune Formation

by

Christopher Savage and Dr. Jani Radebaugh, Geological Sciences Introduction Synthetic Aperture Radar images of Titan collected by the Cassini spacecraft show that dunes are abundant on Titan’s surface, covering almost 20% of Titan’s surface [1,2]. Nearly all of the dunes found on Titan are linear in form, are found near the equator (30°), and have […]

Metacalibration Proof of the Triple Bubble Conjecture in R3

by

Donald Sampson and Dr. Gary Lawlor, Mathematics Education Goal/Purpose My project was to further develop the technique of metacalibration, a new method of minimization proof, in order to prove the triple bubble conjecture: that the standard triple bubble is the least surface area way to separately enclose three given volumes. Importance of Project Over the […]

Modeling Life Expectancy Using Weibull Results Computer Simulation

by

Scott Morris and Dr. Scott Grimshaw, Statistics Introduction The purpose of our project was to model a person’s life expectancy using lifetimes from their ancestry. Typical mortality models are based on data from large populations, and are not necessarily representative of a specific individual. Our primary objective was to model my personal life expectancy based […]

Infiltrated Carbon Nanotube MEMs: Understanding Adhesion Issues

by

Nicholas Morrill and Dr. Robert Davis, Physics & Astronomy Microelectric mechanical devices (MEMs) are structures on the micron scale that act as sensors and actuators. Devices such as these are used in familiar electronics such as iPhones and Nintendo Wii to sense motion. Current methods for MEMs fabrication are insufficient due to geometric design limitations, […]

Using Dendrochronology to Identify an Unknown Earthquake

by

Douglas Metcalf and Dr. Matthew Bekker, Geography Department Geologists use various dating techniques to determine the ages of geologic phenomena. Dendrochronology- the analysis of annual growth-rings in trees- is one of these methods (Stoffel and Bollschwieler, 2008). Unlike other dating procedures, it can determine the exact years in which various events occurred. Such events include […]

Finding Interactions between SmpB and tmRNA during Trans-translation

by

David Healey and Dr. Allen Buskirk, Chemistry and Biochemistry During the last year, I have worked in collaboration with Allen Buskirk and DeAnna Cazier to study the interactions between SmpB and tmRNA during a process called bacterial trans-translation. To understand our experiments, it is necessary to know a little about what trans-translation is, and how […]

Speculative Evaluation in Particle Swarm Optimization

by

Matthew Gardner and Dr. Kevin Seppi, Computer Science Optimization problems are ubiquitous in our modern world. Businesses such as Google need to decide where to place ads, scientists need to fit models to data, and airlines need to schedule their flights. All of these problems are optimization problems, and optimization techniques can be used to […]