Physics Research
Research plays a vital role in the lives of physics faculty and students
at Hamilton. All our faculty are involved in the quest to push back the frontiers
of knowledge and we are pushing in many different directions. Please follow
the links on the left to learn about our work.
The LeRoy Apker Award
This national award, administered by the American Physical Society, is to
recognize outstanding achievements in physics by undergraduate students. Hamilton
students have been among the handful of finalists for this award, drawn from a nationwide pool, on three occasions and one, Brandon
Collings, received the award.
Senior thesis projects
Physics majors conduct a senior thesis project. Past projects have included:
- Gregory Bauman, Modernizing Pulse NMR Code: Transition from IGOR to Python
- Zachary A. Jones, Code Improvements and Stress Analysis of Magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in a Simulated Magnetically Arrested Accretion Disk
- Lauren Kuster, Characterizing a Microfluidic Device for Sorting Nanodiamonds
- Elisabeth Lawrence, Artificial Cytoplasm: Observing Anomalous Diffusion & Progress Towards Drift-Reduction
- Richard S. McCoy, Measuring B Field Gradients using a Compact Gradiometer
- Casey E. McGrath, Quantifying Noise in Measurements of Faraday Rotation in Unpolarized Rubidium
- Alvaro M. Miralles, Exploring Magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor and Kelvin-Helmholtz Instabilities in Thin Magnetically Arrested Disks Around Black Holes
- Christopher Nields, High Precision Current Measurements to Stabilize NMR Power Supply Output
- Liam Regan, Heating in Residential Homes with Heat Pumps
- Michael Scoleri: Bridging Simulation and Visualization: 3D Rendering of Accretion Processes in Black Holes (advisor: Megan Smith)
- Clare Nelle: A Characterization of Loosely-Coherent Searches for Continuous Gravitational Waves (advisors: K. Riles, G. Jones, S. Major, B. Collett)
- Alex Axton: Improving Bimodal Antenna-Resonator Coupling (advisor: Charles Collett)
- Yongwoo Park: Engineering a Magnetometer using Diamond NV Centers (advisor: Viva Horowitz)
- Leah Bell: Exploring the Fabrication Process for PDMS Microfluidic Sorters (advisor: Viva Horowitz)
- Maggie Maselli: My First Glimpse at Teaching: A Lab Investigation into Pressure and Area Using Hovercrafts (advisor: Gordon Jones)
- Shane Dux: Observation of Exoplanet Confirmation of Exoplanet TIC 250839071.01 (advisor: Adam Lark)
- Pippi Seider: Artificial Cytoplasm: Crowding Components Causing Anomalous Diffusion (advisor: Viva Horowitz)
