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Mar. 26th, 2005 10:58 amThe Roundsing with people including ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nightengalesknd was wonderful last night. A little chilly by the end, but nothing a good cup of tea couldn't cure.
I need to start reading up on the physics of NMR for my second (and final) advanced lab experiment of the semester. My partner and I are going to study the temperature dependence of certain relaxation times in Vaseline, which while goopy apparently behaves in NMR like a liquid and presumably has some strong temperature dependence. This has not been done before at Swarthmore, so it will be interesting. People have studied water doped with various paramagnetic ions, mineral oil/glycerin mixtures, and alcohol. The last person to do the experiment was trying to see if NMR could distinguish between Bourbon and Scotch.
Some other things to choose: final presentations for stat mech and quantum. For stat mech, I think I should try to do something plasma-related to gear up for research. There is the kinetic theory in Reif, which is certainly important in plasma physics but is more general (stuff like the Boltzmann and Fokker-Planck equations). Then there is particle-in-cell (PIC) plasma simulations, a topic that could well be part of my thesis, since there's some guy at NASA Goddard interested in doing PIC simulations of flows in SSX. There's also self-organization in fluids, another very relevant topic (it's one of Doc's research areas). The one non-plasma topic I think I'd enjoy doing is stat mech of semiconductors - sort of following up on the theory I had to work on for advanced lab.
As for quantum, Catherine wants a ranked list. There is path integral formalism, which would be hard, but it's Feynman's approach to QM. I'd also be thinking about density matrix formalism, electrons in a periodic potential (eg solid state physics!!!), or maybe molecular spectra.
I need to get some work done now and hunt for the pieces of my mechanical pencil, which exploded yesterday, or else buy a new one. I was trying to hastily clear a jam when I was feeding lead in yesterday morning, so I foolishly just tried to yank the action apart. Well, it did come apart, but the barrel went flying across the Common Room.
nightengalesknd was wonderful last night. A little chilly by the end, but nothing a good cup of tea couldn't cure.I need to start reading up on the physics of NMR for my second (and final) advanced lab experiment of the semester. My partner and I are going to study the temperature dependence of certain relaxation times in Vaseline, which while goopy apparently behaves in NMR like a liquid and presumably has some strong temperature dependence. This has not been done before at Swarthmore, so it will be interesting. People have studied water doped with various paramagnetic ions, mineral oil/glycerin mixtures, and alcohol. The last person to do the experiment was trying to see if NMR could distinguish between Bourbon and Scotch.
Some other things to choose: final presentations for stat mech and quantum. For stat mech, I think I should try to do something plasma-related to gear up for research. There is the kinetic theory in Reif, which is certainly important in plasma physics but is more general (stuff like the Boltzmann and Fokker-Planck equations). Then there is particle-in-cell (PIC) plasma simulations, a topic that could well be part of my thesis, since there's some guy at NASA Goddard interested in doing PIC simulations of flows in SSX. There's also self-organization in fluids, another very relevant topic (it's one of Doc's research areas). The one non-plasma topic I think I'd enjoy doing is stat mech of semiconductors - sort of following up on the theory I had to work on for advanced lab.
As for quantum, Catherine wants a ranked list. There is path integral formalism, which would be hard, but it's Feynman's approach to QM. I'd also be thinking about density matrix formalism, electrons in a periodic potential (eg solid state physics!!!), or maybe molecular spectra.
I need to get some work done now and hunt for the pieces of my mechanical pencil, which exploded yesterday, or else buy a new one. I was trying to hastily clear a jam when I was feeding lead in yesterday morning, so I foolishly just tried to yank the action apart. Well, it did come apart, but the barrel went flying across the Common Room.
