Commencement was held on Friday, May 16.    Departmental ceremonies were held for the first time in the new building for the seven Physics graduates and their families.

Dr. Marty Becker has continued his research in fossil sharks and rays from the upper Cretaceous of northwestern South Dakota and central New Jersey.  To date, the South Dakota project includes:  1) two seasons of field collection for specimens; 2) description and identification of collected materials from literature sources and museum collections; 3) photography of the specimens with a scanning electron microscope; 4) preparation of a presentation for the Geologic Society of America national meeting in Seattle, WA this November, and, 5) submission of a manuscript to the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.   The manuscript titled:  "Chondrichthyans of the Fairpoint Member of the Fox Hills Formation (Maastrichtian), Meade County, South Dakota" is currently in peer review and publication should take place sometime in the Spring semester.

In New Jersey, a project on fossil sawfish from Monmouth County is near completion.  Enough fossil sawfish material was collected over a fifteen year period to submit a manuscript titled:  "Reconstructing the Rostrum of the Sawfish, Ischyriza Mira, from the Lower Navesink Formation (Campanian-Maastrichtian), Monmouth County, New Jersey" to the journal Paleontology.  The manuscript is currently in peer review and results of this project will also be presented at the Geologic Society of America national meeting in Seattle, WA this November.  Many phases of both projects were completed with the assistance of two TCNJ students, Ryan Earley and Daniel Brady.

Dr. Alan Hoffmeister has joined the Department as a result of the  early retirement of Dr. Fred Goldstein.  Dr. Hoffmeister's research involves the history of drilling predation on benthic invertebrates (mollusks and brachiopods) and the long term, large scale evolutionary impact of this form of predation, the effects of taphonomy on the paleontologic record and the application of microfossils to stratigraphic problems.  Active projects include work on drilling predation brachiopods from the New Albany Shale (Devonian) from Indiana and Magdalena Group (Pennsylvanian) of New Mexico.

Dr. Hoffmeister has had two papers published in 2003.  He is lead author, along with colleagues from Virginia Tech, Harvard and the University of Michigan, on a paper titled "Intense drilling in the Carboniferous brachiopod Cardiarina cordata Cooper 1956"  published in Lethaia, and he is co-author with Michal Kowalewski of Virginia Tech on a paper titled "Sieves and fossils: Effects of mesh size on paleontological patterns" in Palaios.

Dr. Romulo Ochoa  and Dr. Thulsi Wickramasighe attended the Introductory Calculus Based Physics Conference held in Washington D.C. October 31 to November 2, 2003. They presented a poster on "Analysis of a Variable Length Pendulum". On March 20, Dr. Ochoa and Yawar Qadri participated in the first Posters under the Dome program organized by the College of New Jersey and Montclair State University. They presented "Breaking Glass with Bytes".

Dr. Ronald Gleeson published an article this summer titled "Algorithms for the recognition of 2D images of m points and n lines in 3D."  The article was published in the journal Image and Vision Computing and describes methods for automatically identifying 3D objects in a perspective-free manner from 2D computer images.  Dr. Gleeson's co-authors were Dr. F. Grosshans (from West Chester University), M. Hirsch (currently working for Raytheon, Inc.), and Dr. R. Williams (retired employee of The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division).

Dr. Thulsi Wickramasinghe  published "Gravitational Lensing with Lenses in Motion", IAU Publication, 2003, "Preliminary Analysis of Gravitational Lensing with Dark Energy and Lenses in Motion", IAU Publication, 2003 and "Linearity of Quarter Periods of the Lorentz's Pendulum, American Journal of Physics (with R. Ochoa), 2003.  In addition, he published "Weak Gravitational Lensing of the Reissner-Nordstrom Black Hole" with senior physics major Chris Bertinato, in the TCNJ Journal of Student Scholarship in 2003.  Thulsi also received an international travel grant from the American Astronomical Society for the IAU General Assembly in Sydney Australia during the summer. He gave talks on "Gravitational Lenses and Their Motions"  in New Zealand & Australia, and "Effects of Dark Energy on Gravitational Lensing with Lenses in Motion" in Sydney.  "Uses of GRBs as Cosmos Probes" was the subject of his talk at Universiteit Van, Netherlands in 2003.  He also had the opportunity to give a talk when traveling home to Sri Lanka entitled "A Journey Through the Cosmos" during the mid-semester break.  In addition to attending the International Astronomical Union conference in Sydney, Australia, a poster was presented on "An Analysis of Linearity of Quarter Periods of the Lorentz's Pendulum" (with Dr. Ochoa) at an Introductory Calculus-Based Physics Conference in Virginia in October of 2003.

Richard Santillo worked with Dr. Wickramasinghe on motion of stars near the sun in General Relativity.

Dan Brady continued his research with Dr. Becker and presented microfossils from harvester ant nests from north/central South Dakota.

Yawar Qadri shared the results of his experimentation with visualization of void growth during silica fracture under the supervision of Dr. Ochoa.

Gravitational lensing due to charged black holes was the subject of a presentation by Chris Bertinato under the supervision of Dr. Wickramasinghe.

Using A.I. to differentiate between objects of different heights was the topic of a presentation given by Teri-Lynn Allonardo under the supervision of Dr. Ochoa.

Jeffrey Chin worked on analysis of a bipod robot directed by Dr. Ochoa.

Dan Costantino and Karl Strohmaier presented their findings on possible astronomical alignments of the pyramids in Egypt, under the supervision of Dr. Wickramasinghe.

Mechanical analysis of volleyball services was presented by Thomas Holdbrook under the direction of Dr. Ochoa.

Dr. Ochoa also supervised the work of Yawar Qadri in searching for precursors of fracture in silica glass.

Richard Santillo worked with Dr. Wickramasinghe in investigating the m-Z relation and other cosmic measures in an accelerating universe.

Dr. Ochoa supervised the presentation of Doug Jenkins on photoluminescence spectra of colored glass

Irina Shnayder worked with Dr. Gleeson on a presentation entitled the stellarator project

Senior Dan Costantino studied the growth of magnetic nanostructures using electrodeposition at  Renssalear Polytechnic Institute.  This project was sponsored by the Department of Physics, Applied Physics, Astronomy and Material Science through the NSF's Research Experience for Undergraduates program.  The goal was to improve the use of electrodeposition to form nanorods for GMR (giant magneto-resistance) purposes.  Over the course of ten weeks, cobalt nanorods were made with reproducible magnetic properties.  Future work will involve making cobalt/copper nanowires.

Richard Santillo, a senior physics major, was involved in a research experience at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.  Working under Dr. Zhehui Wang in P-24, the plasma physics division, Richard completed the construction of a working steady-state helicon plasma source.  This experience involved the design, construction and de-bugging of various systems, including vacuum, gas, electrical and RF power.

The Physics Club hosted a dinner for faculty and staff in January of 2003 at Chevy's Restaurant.  The event also served as a fund-raiser for the club.

Another activity hosted by The Physics Club was a presentation on March 19th by Dr. David Seckel from the University of Delaware who spoke about Nuetrino Detection.

The department had the bi-annual inductions for Sigma Pi Sigma, the Physics Honor Society.  Membership in Sigma Pi Sigma is available to physics majors of junior or senior standing with a GPA of 3.0 or higher.  The following students became members in April of 2003:  Christopher Bertinato, Michael Carcich, Daniel Costantino, Morgan Farnkopf, Douglas Jenkins, Christopher McKittrick, Yawar Qadri, Karl R. Strohmaier and Christopher Verzella.

The Physics Club toured Princeton Plasma Physics Lab on April 24th.

The department celebrated the achievement of its seven graduates in May by hosting a "senior dinner" at The Washington Crossing Inn.

A retirement luncheon was given in October to honor Dr. Fredric Goldstein who retired in June.  He was presented a plaque commemorating his 30 years of service to TSC/TCNJ.

On November 19th,  Dr. Stan Owocki from the University of Delaware presented a talk on "The Rocket Science of Launching Stellar Discs"  to physics students and faculty.

The Science Complex 

We have now settled in to our new home simply known as "The Science Complex, Physics/Math Building".  As we go to press, our 48-seat planetarium is near completion with the addition of a video projection system being installed by Sky-Scan of Nashua, NH.  Once this is completed, the Astronomy faculty will begin using the facility in newly designed activities to be included in the Descriptive Astronomy, Astronomy II and Astrophysics courses.  Construction has continued on the roof of the building in order to accommodate the two observatory domes and student observing platforms.  The physics labs are up and running and thanks to an Educational Fund Leasing Grant, we have added over $450,000 in laboratory equipment to our teaching and research labs.

Keeping in touch is as simple as sending your information to physics@tcnj.edu. We will be happy to include it in an upcoming issue of PHYZINFO.  We would like to feature an alumni article in every issue, so  please let us know when there are significant events in your life which you would like to share with our readers. This information is not only of interest to the members of the department and your fellow classmates, but it often serves as a recruitment tool for prospective students.  We are very proud of our graduates and welcome the opportunity to share your accomplishments, and the many ways your education at TSC/TCNJ has led to a successful career and a continuing interest in science.

CONTENTS

Class of 2003

Faculty Research and Activities

Student Research

Departmental News and Activities

Alumni News

Editors' Letter
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Please click thumbnails to enlarge images 

Faculty and graduating students.

New Physics facilities.

Picnic

Graduating students-faculty dinner.

Sigma Pi Sigma Inductees.

Independent Study presentations.