Events

Events at Physics

<< Summer 2015 Fall 2015 Spring 2016 >>
Subscribe your calendar or receive email announcements of events

Events on Monday, December 7th, 2015

Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
Dusty plasmas for fundamental physics, fusion, semiconductor manufacturing, and astronomy
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Place: 2241 Physics
Speaker: John Goree, University of Iowa
Abstract:
Beyond the usual electrons and ions, low-temperature plasmas can also contain charged particles of solid matter, ranging in size from nanometers to microns. They gain a large charge by collecting more electrons than ions from the ambient plasma. In fusion these solid particles are found immersed in the plasma of the divertor region of tokamaks. In semiconductor manufacturing they are called “particulates,” and they grow spontaneously and represent a contamination problem. Astronomers call these solid particles “dust,” and they are found in the plasma of the interstellar medium where they are the precursors of terrestrial planets like Earth. In this talk I review these diverse examples of dusty plasma, and then I present a fundamental physics experiment intended to probe the extreme properties of plasmas that are dominated by Coulomb collisions. A shear flow in this “strongly coupled” plasma results in localized viscous heating, a phenomenon that has long been predicted theoretically for both plasmas and fluids but never observed until now.
Host: Paul Terry, UW
Add this event to your calendar
Physics Education Innovation Seminar
Online Activities to Improve In Person Learning
Time: 12:00 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin
Speaker: Tim Stelzer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract: Students’ unprecedented access to content on the web is providing a unique opportunity to transform the role lectures in education, moving the focus from content delivery to helping students synthesize the content into knowledge. We have introduced a variety of activities to facilitate this transformation at the University of Illinois, including web-based preflight assessments of student understanding before lecture, peer instruction (clickers) to assess and facilitate student understanding during lecture, and web-based multimedia pre-lectures designed to provide students with content before lecture. In this talk I will discuss the pedagogical motivation for introducing these activities, and the impact they have had at the University of Illinois<br>
<br>
Bio: Professor Timothy Stelzer received his bachelor's degree in physics from St. John's University in 1988, and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1993. A high-energy particle theorist, Professor Stelzer has concentrated on standard model physics at hadron colliders. He has also been heavily involved with the Physics Education Group at Illinois, where he has led the development and implementation of tools for assessing the effectiveness of educational innovations in introductory courses and expanding the use of web technology in physics pedagogy. He was instrumental in the development of the I-clicker™ and is a regular on the University's "Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students."<br>
He and collaborators were selected by the American Physical Society to receive the 2013 Excellence in Education Award in recognition of their creation of smartPhysics, a web-based learning environment. He also received the UW Department of Physics' Distinguished Alumni Award in May 2015.
Poster: https://www.physics.wisc.edu/events/posters/2015/3875.pdf
Add this event to your calendar