Alum to present on ozone and greenhouse gasses Sept. 27

Dr John Barnes ’75, director of the NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory, will give a presentation on “Ozone and Greenhouse Gases: An Update on Two Environmental Issues” at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27, in Hoffman Hall, Room 217.

His talk will begin by noting that in 1958, the longest-running, continuous measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was started at Mauna Loa Observatory on the Big Island of Hawaii. In just a few years, Charles David Keeling of Scripps Oceanographic Institute was able to see two things: that there was a yearly cycle, and that the average level was increasing. This was the first realization that humankind’s activities were affecting the entire planet’s atmosphere.

Some years later, it was hypothesized that some widely used chemicals, CFCs and others, might reach the stratosphere where they could destroy ozone in the naturally occurring ozone layer. This was graphically proved to be true with discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole. The status of these two issues and their possible environmental consequences will be described, along with a global network of measurements that track the changes.

Dr. John E. Barnes has worked as a scientist at the NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory since 1993, and has been director since 1998. His main research concentrates on measuring particulates (aerosols) and their properties in the air. He attended graduate school at Colorado State University (M.S. Physics, 1980) and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1988 where he worked on ozone properties and became interested in atmospheric physics. He spent five years working at the University of Michigan and has also worked in the aerospace industry on electric propulsion and the space shuttle.

The talk is sponsored by the Physics and Astronomy Club, the physics honor society Sigma Pi Sigma, and the Department of Physics.

Five students take a ‘summer vacation’ in the research lab

SMU students, from left: front, Thomas Briese, Jennifer Koezly; back, Brian Kasel, Timothy McDonald and Luke Baertlein are spending their summers doing research at laboratories.

Two sophomore physics majors, two junior physics majors, and a senior biochemistry major will spend their summer doing research at laboratories in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois:

• Jennifer Koezly, a junior double major in Chemistry and Engineering Physics from Ham Lake, was accepted into the Lando/NSF Summer Research Program in the chemical sciences at the University of Minnesota;

• Brian Kasel, a junior Biophysics major from Saint Anthony, landed a position in the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center Summer Fellowship Program;

• Luke Baertlein, a sophomore Biophysics major from Mazeppa, will work at the Mayo Clinic in the Department of Health Sciences Research - Epidemiology Division, funded through Mayo’s Undergraduate Research Employment Program (UREP); and

• Timothy McDonald, a sophomore double major in Chemistry and Engineering Physics from Ham Lake, and Thomas Briese, a senior Biochemistry major from Rochester, will both be working with Paul Nienaber SJ, associate professor and chair of physics, as part of the MicroBooNE neutrino experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL. Funding for these students is provided by a Research at Undergraduate Institutions grant from the National Science Foundation.

“This is a singular contribution to undergraduate research in the sciences at Saint Mary’s,” noted Dr Nienaber. “These students are talented and well-motivated, and they’ve worked hard to get where they are. Placing this many students in these sorts of research projects at major universities and laboratories speaks volumes about the quality of the science program at Saint Mary’s University.”

Physics, Chemistry clubs host Girl Scout troops

On March 11, the Physics Club and Chemistry Club hosted two Girl Scout Troops to assist them in earning the Science Wonders Try-It Badge. The professors and college students planned an array of science experiments and demonstrations. Fifteen second- and third-grade girls learned through hands-on activities about recycling paper, magnetism, static electricity and the formation of crystals. There were also three exciting demonstrations: how a stir plate works, elephant’s toothpaste, and the magnetism flyer.

A special thanks to Professor Brett Bodsgard, Father Paul Nienaber, and Professor Robyn Wanberg and the following students: Jen Koezly, Brian Kasel, Tim McDonald, Renee Custer, Tom Briese and Mary Glenski.

SMU physicist works on a mystery of the universe*

Father Paul Nienaber, S.J., is part of a collaboration of physicists who on Wednesday announced important first results from a major particle physics experiment.
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Nienaber, chair of the physics department at Saint Mary’s University, is one of 77 scientists from 17 institutions working for almost a decade on the MiniBooNE experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab in Batavia, Ill.

Using the Fermilab particle accelerator, Nienaber and his colleagues cleared up a long-standing puzzle involving different kinds of neutrinos and their properties. Neutrinos are tiny fundamental building blocks of the universe related to electrons.

A previous experiment had raised the tantalizing possibility that neutrino masses could be much larger than expected; the MiniBooNE result conclusively rules that out. “This is another part of the answer to the big question,” Nienaber said. “Why is the universe the way it is?”

Nienaber said researchers are “trying to understand how the universe came to be and how it works today. Once we understand nature at its smallest scale, we can make more intelligent guesses at what happens at the largest scale.”

For additional information, go to www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/BooNE-box.html

Nienaber presents on the use of Tegrity*

Father Paul Nienaber, Ph.D., assistant professor and chair of the Department of Physics, discussed Tegrity in the presentation, “Latest and Greatest or Just Latest? Pedagogical Technology in the Physics Classroom” on April 28 at the spring meeting of the Minnesota section of the American Association of Physics Teachers at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minn.