SPS Zone Meeting
March 23, 2018 to March 25, 2018
Florida State University in Tallahassee
Meeting host: By:Winston Roberts
SPS Chapter:
On the weekend of March 23-25, Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, hosted the 2018 Spring Zone 6 meeting. Around forty students from Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Embry Riddle Aeronatical University, University of Florida, University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and Florida State University came to represent their respective SPS chapters and participate in the events at FSU.
The meeting began on Friday evening with a planetarium show and registration. Students who were able to arrive in time were treated to a showing of \Black Holes", which explores `one of the most mystifying, awe-inspiring, phenomena in the universe'. After the planetar-ium show, attendees were treated to liquid nitrogen ice cream. After the cold refreshment, students were divided into groups of four for a game of Kahoot.
We began Saturday morning with registration for any who could not arrive on Friday. This was followed by combined tours of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) and the High Performance Materials Institute (HPMI). At the Maglab, they were guided through the various research areas, and given brief descriptions of the many diffrent kinds of research carried at the facility. At HPMI, students saw where advanced, novel materials are developed, characterized, and applied in various ways. Particular emphasis was given at these facilities to carbon nano-tubes and graphene.
After the tours, there were two presentations by FSU faculty. The rst was by Dr. Stephen Hill on his research in electron magnetic resonance, or EMR. Th second was by Dr. Gregory Boebinger, the Director of the NHMFL, in which he gave an overview of the various kinds of science done at the laboratory.
Attendees then adjourned to the main campus where they were provided with lunch. This was followed by a `Career Workshop' presentation by Kerry Kidewell of AIP. There was then a presentation by Professor Jeremiah Murphy on Multi-Messenger Astronomy. The focus of this talk was the recent experimental observation of gravitational waves originating in black hole mergers and neutron star mergers, and the physical signicance of those events. After a short break, there were four student presentations.
The student presentations were followed by a tour of the John. D. Fox Spuerconducting Linear Accelerator, where nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics experiments are performed.
After that tour, the students attended a poster session/reception, where six posters were presented and judged. The judges eventually selected Jennifer McGuire of Emory University as having the best poster. She received a copy of `Mechanics' by Landau and Lifshitz as her prize.
The final event of the day was a `Paint Your Research' session, in which attendees were invited to paint a picture that represented some aspect of the research in which they were involved. Easels and paints were provided for this event, and some of the paintings are shown in the gure.
Areas of Alignment:
