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Appalachian State University has received $98,000 from
the North Carolina Space Grant Consortium. This is the second
year that faculty-student research proposals from Appalachian’s
Department of Physics and Astronomy have received funding from
this NASA-sponsored program.
Randy Maples, left, and
Sam Abee work on a physics project in the ion trap lab
in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Appalachian
State University. The senior physics majors received student
research assistantship stipends from the North Carolina
Space Grant Consortium to conduct their work. Their research
involves measuring properties of ions important to the
chemistry of the atmosphere. Consortium funding also supports
faculty research, physical science education outreach
and travel stipends to help students attend meetings of
professional organizations. Photo
special to the Mountain Times by Eric Peterson
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Tony Calamai, chairman of the Department of Physics and Astronomy,
said the funding will support undergraduate and graduate student
research stipends, physical science education outreach and travel
stipends to help students attend meetings of professional organizations.
“The undergraduate and graduate research assistantships yield
benefits for both the students and the professors with whom they
work,” Calamai said. The students typically continue their
summer research work during the academic year through independent
study or for research credits
“With the teaching load here, it is really critical that
professors make good progress on their research during the summer
and winter break and try to keep up that progress while they are
teaching during the fall and spring semester,” Calamai explained.
“The faculty member benefits by having a trained research
assistant during the academic year and the students get great
faculty mentorship and research experience that opens the door
to graduate programs and professional careers.”
The funding will also support research projects proposed by assistant
professors Jon Saken and Adrian Daw.
Saken received $20,000 from the Space Grant to purchase a specialized
digital camera that will be installed on the 32-inch telescope
at the university’s Dark Sky Observatory.
Saken and his student research assistants will use the equipment
to study magnetic interactions between close orbiting exoplanets
and their host stars. Exoplanets, also known as extrasolar planets,
are planets that orbit a star outside our solar system. What they
learn may lead to a better understanding of our own solar system.
Saken and Professor Richard Gray will also use the equipment to
study young stars that are similar to the sun. “The sun is
4.6 billion years old, but we don’t know what it was like
when it was young,” Saken said. “Learning about the
younger stars will help us understand what the sun was like at
the time the Earth was being formed.”
Daw received $25,000 from the Space Grant to build an optical
device to use when studying the sun’s corona during a solar
eclipse.
“There isn’t any manufactured equipment available for
this particular application,” Daw said. The grant funds will
be used to purchase special filters and lenses that will be mounted
on a CCD detector, allowing Daw and student research assistants
to record near-infrared images of the sun’s outer corona.
“A total solar eclipse provides a rare opportunity when scattered
light from the solar disk is blocked by the moon,” he said.
“You can’t recreate it. You have to wait for nature
to take its course.”
Such research will help other scientists better understand the
corona’s magnetic fields, Daw explained. “These magnetic
fields in the solar corona affect the chemistry of our atmosphere,
can disrupt communications and electrical power distribution and
can represent a serious hazard to spacecraft.”
Daw plans to use the equipment to capture data from along the
Chinese-Mongolian border in 2008 during the next total solar eclipse. |
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