Posters will be displayed during the entire morning starting at 8:00 am on Saturday (October 25, 2014).
Poster presentations will take place between 9:30 am - 10:00 am and between 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm.
Please remove the posters no later than 3:00 pm.
Where: The School of Sciences and Mathematics Building (SSMB) Atrium at 202 Calhoun Street, Charleston, SC 2940.
Poster size: We recommend using A0 page size, which is 841 x 1189 mm, or 33.1 x 46.8 inches, although we can accommodate any poster that is less than 60 inches wide.
Disclaimer: The organizers are not responsible for your poster. Please take steps to secure it promptly after the session is over. Any posters left up after the session is over are subject to disposal.
Poster abstracts
- Dean Spyropoulosand(1) and Gardner Marshal(2), (1)Charleston County School of the Arts, (2)College of Charleston
Increasing Coulomb's Electrostatic Force and its Effects
By increasing the strength of the Coulomb force, the universe would prove to be very different, if not completely divergent. Key to this truth is the understanding of the relationship between Coulomb's Law and the Nuclear Force in nucleons of respective atoms. The Nuclear Force, in the close quarters of 1-10 fermies, is much stronger than the electrostatic repulsion from Coulomb's Law. However, beyond a distance of ~10 femtometer, the Nuclear Force will be reduced to an almost negligible magnitude. This is unlike the Coulomb force which weakens gradually as distance increases. For very large nuclei, the electrostatic repulsion of Coulomb's Law will take over and cause the nucleons to become unstable. This leads to the question of how the periodic table, interstellar formation, and cosmic formation in general would be different if the constant of Coulomb's Law was greater by even a small percentage. We investigate the answer to this question. - Sawaiz Syed, Dr. Brian Thoms, and Dr. Xiaochun He, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303
Development of Low-cost and Robust Radiation Sensor Network
This poster presents the result of my senior research project at Georgia State University for developing a low-cost and robust radiation sensor network. Each sensor node has a modular deign which consists of a Geiger tube and its power supply, Atmel AVR microcontroller, wireless transceiver. The server is currently implemented with a credit-card size minicomputer (Raspberry Pi). Future iterations of this project will use WiFi communication, which can be easily expanded and integrated into any existing environmental monitoring network. The sensor is designed for deployment of sensor array within 20-meter range. One of the important applications of this project is to provide low-cost real-time monitoring of any radiation safety environment. It also has potential application in homeland security to gather data for early detection of radiological weapons. The students in advanced physics lab will be actively involved in assembling and testing the sensor nodes and will use this system for group research projects. - Jacquelyn Brennan, David Rosengrant, and Greg Rushton, Kennesaw State University
I-IMPACT Noyce Project - Attracting and Supporting Successful Career-Changers and Professional Educators in the Physics Classroom
Kennesaw State University received a Robert Noyce award from the National Science Foundation and created an Initiative to Increase and Mentor Physics And Chemistry Teachers (I-IMPACT) program. The program supports career-changers called Teaching Fellows as well as current professional educators called Master Teaching Fellows. The project has multiple goals depending on the group: (a) a successful transition from industry into the classroom for the Teaching Fellows (TFs) (b) development of teacher leaders for the Master Teaching Fellows (MTFs) (c) increasing retention of both groups of educators. Purposeful interactions between the groups allow for all to learn from each other’s diverse experiences. We are currently in our third year (of six) and have eight MTFs/TFS in Physics and eight MTFs/TFs in Chemistry. This poster highlights the three years of this project and the professional development pathway. Furthermore, as a Georgia Tech alumnus I will follow my personal pathway into this project. I started with an invitation to learn more about their partnership with Kennesaw State University, have conducted research on the project, and am in my last year of the MAT program. - Philip D Money, Kennesaw, Dr. David Rosengrant, and Dr. Michelle Dean, State University
Using a summer camp as a recruitment tool for physics and chemistry teachers
At the start of the summer in 2014, Kennesaw State University implemented a project to recruit future physics and chemistry teachers. This project also falls under the umbrella of a recently awarded Noyce grant. We used a summer physical science camp as a recruitment tool. The camp consisted of three days of training for the camp leaders and a week-long summer camp with the students. The camp consisted of two days of chemistry activities, two days of physics activities and one day of a tour of Kennesaw State University. The camp attendees were rising eighth graders from local high needs schools in Cobb County. We focused on two different student populations to recruit into teaching: local high school seniors and undergraduate students from Kennesaw State University. The main goal in testing recruitment was to see how candidates felt about different activities as well as interactions with students and interests in teaching. - David Rosengrant and Amanda Burke, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, 30062
Data Analysis of a Year-long Eye-Tracking Study on Undergraduate Elementary Education Students during Physical Science Lecture
This study investigates the gaze patterns of pre-service elementary education students in their physical science lecture. Our goal is to better understand the relationships between gaze patterns and student attention during class. If we better understand what keeps our students attention or what distracts them, then we can have increased attention, which increases what they learn. To accomplish this task, we used a portable eye-tracker, Tobii Glasses. We are able to record what a person sees, what they say or hear and most importantly where they are looking. This investigation includes when, for how long and what students focus on in the classroom (i.e. demonstrations, instructor, notes, board work, and presentations) during a normal lecture. We used the data to compare students’ gender, age, location in the classroom, note-taking preference and achievement to where each student focused his or her attention. - Richard Justice, Michael Ngo, and Tatiana Krivosheev, Clayton State University, Morrow, GA 30260
Monte Carlo Simulation of the Bragg Peak Spreader for the Proton Beam Therapy
The focus of this study is to create and improve the process of making a spread out Bragg Peak (SOBP) so that Proton Beam Therapy can be more readily available to patients with cancers that are more difficult to treat with conventional methods. The candidate of choice for creating the SOBP is a tank filled with water and bubbles. This particular part of the study focuses on the impact different gases used to make the bubbles has on creating the SOBP. The gases used are air, hydrogen, ammonia, and methane gas. - Samuel Adams, Diedra Shorty, and Tatiana Krivosheev, Clayton State University, Morrow, GA 30260
Monte Carlo Simulation of a Novel Bragg Peak Spreader for Proton Cancer Therapy
While conventional X-ray therapy is a much more accepted form of treatment for cancerous tissues, we turn our research to a lesser known therapy that utilizes protons instead of X-rays. Proton therapy is highly efficient because it can minimize the damage to surrounding healthy tissue but maximize the precision of the dose delivery. This precision comes from the ability of protons to only deposit their energy once they have reached a certain depth and release it in its entirety – the effect known as a Bragg Peak. Because of this effect, it is necessary to use spreaders to create what is called a spread out Bragg peak that will precisely target the entire affected area. Conventional spreaders, made of materials like Plexiglass, are specially made for each patient, which is expensive and inconvenient. We propose and test a novel spreader which uses a thin walled glass tank filled with water and air bubbles. The spreading of the peak is achieved by varying the size o f the bubbles and their intensity. We present the results of the Monte Carlo simulations of the spreader using GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulation software. - Charles Dean and Dr. Milind N. Kunchur, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208
Transport studies in superconducting films
This presentation discusses some of our measurement techniques used to study superconducting films. Superconductors have wide variation in resistance -- from zero at low temperatures to a large "normal-state" value above the transition temperature Tc. This presents a special challenge, because the act of measuring resistance requires a current to be passed: if resistance is not absent, then Joule heating will occur causing the temperature to rise, which in turn changes the resistance being measured. One option is to use very low values of current, but this misses some of the exciting physics that is unique to the high-current density regime. We overcome this problem by using pulsed currents, which sustain high values for limited duration while maintaining low average values because of the low duty cycle. This presentation will discuss the circuits and configuration used for pulsed studies of superconductors. - Laura Stevens, Joseph Carson, Kat Low, Kara Perrino, David Ruwadi(1), Starr Jordan(2), Glenn Schneider(3), (1)College of Charleston, (2)Children's Museum of the Lowcountry, Charleston, (3)University of Arizona
The Hubble Exoplanet Classroom!
We present a status report on the Hubble Exoplanet Classroom, an interactive website designed to engage 8-12th grade students in physical science concepts using the exciting field of exoplanet studies. Addressing national teaching standards, the webpage allows educators to enhance their physical science, physics, and astronomy curriculum with student-driven lessons. The webpage records students' performance on lessons and quizzes and compiles the results, which can be accessed by the instructor using a secure website. - Lincoln Frayley and Dr. Ana Oprisan, College of Charleston
Direct imaging of nanocolloid fluctuations
We used direct imaging methods to record non-equilibrium fluctuations of the interface between nanocolloids and water during free diffusion. Monochromatic light was passed through the sample that contains a dense naocolloid at the bottom of a sample cell unit and pure water on top. We used silver nanocolloids with 100 nm diameter in concentrations of 4.375%, 8.75%, 17.5%, 25%, and 50%, and silver with 157 nm diameter in concentrations of 25% and 50%. After passing through the cell, the scattered light is captured by a CCD camera. From the images, we computed the power spectrum and the structure factor for each concentration. We observed giant concentration fluctuations due to the coupling of gravitational buoyancy and the gradient of concentration. The critical wave number at which the transition to giant fluctuations occurs changes over time within a specific concentration, as well as between concentrations. The critical wave number and the relaxation time of concentration fluctuations determine are used for estimating the diffusion coefficient. - Derek Novo(1), Garrett Arnhold(2), and Dr. Sorinel A. Oprisan(1), (1)College of Charleston, Charleston, SC(2) Washington Central University, WA
Numerical investigation of striatal beat frequency model of interval timing
Time is an essential dimension of the world around us, determining the decisions we make, the actions we choose to take, and the very precision of our slightest movements. Millisecond timing is important for speech recognition, auditory processing, playing music and dancing. Circadian timing (hours-to-days range) controls sleep and wakefulness, and is critical for metabolic and reproductive fitness. Interval timing, or timing in the seconds-to-minutes range, is crucial for rate estimation, decision-making and foraging. Interval timing has been demonstrated in many species, from invertebrates to many vertebrates. In most species, the error of time estimation varies quasi-linearly with the estimated duration (criterion time), a characteristic known as scalar property. In addition, dopaminergic (DA) agonists and antagonists speed up and slow down the internal clock, respectively. We will investigate the relationship between time-scale invariance and noise characteristics. It was previously shown that time-scale invariance only exists the SBF model in the presence of noise. However, it is not clear how the type of nois and its characteristics affect the scalar property. - William Hester and Gardner Marshal, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29424
Investigating Dark Matter Composition Through Decays Into Flavor Conserving Lepton Pairs
Using the physics simulation software Pythia, we simulate the decay of scalar, weakly-interacting, massive, dark matter particles into flavor conserving Tau/Anti-Tau lepton pairs. The energy spectrum resulting from these simulations is used to calculate the expected number of events that will be detected at the ICECUBE observatory in Antarctica during its five year operation period. Using this information, we place bounds on what the upper limit of the lifetime of these dark matter particles can be for this particular decay process, narrowing our scope for future investigations into dark matter composition.