Whitman College Physics Department

12/13/2022

At a faculty retreat during my first or second year of teaching, the Dean asked everyone to identify what they thought was the most important invention of the 20th Century. The transistor made several people's list. Whitman grad, Walter Brattain, was the experimentalist leading the fabrication of the device. In this article you can hear him read from his lab notes for that day in December 75 years ago.

Bell Labs was the research arm of AT&T, a monopoly at the time the transistor was invented.

09/23/2022

Another cool picture from the Webb telescope. Neptune.

09/12/2022

Amazing image of an Einstein ring observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. the center spot is a galaxy and the halo is light from a more distant galaxy that has been focused by the closer galaxy’s gravity.

Discovery Sheds New Light on Famous Einstein Ring Social distance science made possible with public W. M. Keck Observatory and NASA archive data. Determined to find a needle in a cosmic haystack, a pair of astronomers time traveled through archives of old data from W. M. Keck Observatory on Mau

09/06/2022

Cool pics from Webb. Tons of data for Astro-Physics types to sink their teeth into.

Feast your eyes on the beautiful spiral structure of the Phantom Galaxy, M74, as seen by Webb in mid-infrared light.

Delicate, web-like filaments of dust and gas wind outwards from the center of the galaxy. These spiral arms are traced by blue and bursts of pink, which are star-forming regions. A cluster of young stars glow blue at the very heart of the galaxy.

Read more: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2208a/

Correction: This Webb image of M74 was processed by ESA, with an acknowledgement to citizen scientist Judy Schmidt for bringing this object to the public’s attention with her own, earlier, processed image.

Image credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team.
Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt

07/12/2022

More images from Webb.

The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

07/11/2022

The first image from the Webb telescope is amazing. The data stream from this scope will keep astronomers and physicists busy for awhile.

Sneak a peek at the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken — all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope. (Literally! Webb was able to capture this image in less than one day, while similar deep field images from Hubble can take multiple weeks.)

This is Webb’s first image released as we begin to : nasa.gov/webbfirstimages/

If you held a grain of sand up to the sky at arm’s length, that tiny speck is the size of Webb’s view in this image. Imagine — galaxies galore within a grain, including light from galaxies that traveled billions of years to us! Why do some of the galaxies in this image appear bent? The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a “gravitational lens,” bending light rays from more distant galaxies behind it, magnifying them.

This image isn’t the farthest back we’ve ever observed. Non-infrared missions like COBE and WMAP saw the universe much closer to the Big Bang (about 380,000 years after), when there was only microwave background radiation, but no stars or galaxies yet. Webb sees a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an international collaboration between NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the ESA - European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The Space Telescope Science Institute is the science and mission operations center for Webb.

Tune in tomorrow at 10:30 am ET (14:30 UTC) for the reveal of the rest of Webb’s First Images!

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

05/27/2022

Congratulations to our 15 graduates last Sunday, May 22. Best wishes as your journey continues.

02/11/2022

A long time between posts. Here is a penny we melted today using a large fresnel lens and the sun. The penny is mostly zinc with a copper skin which explains all of the silver appearance of the melted coin. It took about a minute to heat to melting temperature.

08/03/2021

Back from a COVID break from the Physics page. Rather than try to catch up, here we just begin with today’s photo of six students participating in summer research.

07/22/2020

In an effort to stay connected with our students this summer we are holding weekly online meetings to discuss research work, issues of belonging and inclusion, and building a community when we are not able to meet together. Alums are invited to join the conversation! Email one of the faculty for more information.

07/22/2020

Summer research has continued amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We have many students participating in projects this summer, though almost all in a remote format. We have more than 10 students participating in studies during the summer. In addition, we are planning courses for the fall. We are exploring online laboratories that will enable us to make one plan regardless of whether students are on campus or learning remotely.

02/18/2020

Visited Walter Brattain’s Nobel prize today in the library archives.Always fun to check out the Brattain collection. He was quoted in an article that he regretted the use of the transistor to make rock and roll music.