Twelve of Hamilton’s outstanding female science students are the first recipients of the Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Award. The new annual award will fund up to 12 female scientists each summer over the course of three years as Clare Boothe Luce Scholars in the fields of computer science, physics and chemistry. The $144,600 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation will be matched with funds from Hamilton.

Dean of Faculty Patrick Reynolds visited Professor Gordon Jones’ “Physics 190: The Mechanical Universe” class last week to help illustrate some laws of physics.  Lying on a bed of nails, Reynolds demonstrated the difference between force and pressure. In comparing a bed with a single nail to one with hundreds of nails in both cases the force (Reynolds’ weight) is the same, but the pressure is different.  On a bed of hundreds of nails the force is spread over many nails in the same way that pressure depends on the area over which a force is spread.

Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connolly was a co-author of an article published in the Sept. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The article, “The BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey. II. Investigating Mass-density Profile Evolution in the SLACS+BELLS Strong Gravitational Lens Sample,” presents the results of research into possible ways in which the density in the centers of the biggest galaxies has increased over the last six billion years.

Five Hamilton students who spent the summer working in science-related internships had the opportunity to share information on their experiences in the first event in a new Career Center series on Sept. 24.

Hamilton physics concentrators Nick Sylvester ’13, Jill Hallak ’13, Kerkira Stockton ’14 and Brandon Wilson ’14 have spent the summer conducting research for the aCORN collaborative, a project being carried out by five universities and colleges and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

McKinley Brumback ’14 and Katie Pierce ’14 are working with Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connolly and her husband, University of Pennsylvania Postdoctoral Researcher Brian Connolly, on a summer research project that has the potential to fundamentally change much of what is known about the universe.

As a physics and philosophy dual concentrator, Emi Birch ’14 has taken an interdisciplinary approach to her education, an approach that is also reflected by her summer research project. Birch is attempting to replicate an experiment conducted by French physicist Jean Foucault in 1851. Foucault hung a 67 meter (about 220 ft.) pendulum from the roof of the Pantheon, in Paris, in order to demonstrate the rotation of the earth.

Hamilton faculty Wei-Jen Chang (biology), Natalia Connolly (physics), and Alistair Campbell (computer science) have just been awarded a Multi-Investigator Cottrell College Science Award by the Research Corporation.  This award, in the amount of $100,000, is for developing novel computational techniques for investigating gene interaction networks in fish parasite called Ichthyopthirius multifiliis (Ich).

According to The Wall Street Journal’s “Market Watch,” alternative energy is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States.  Elizabeth Jonathan ’13, a physics concentrator and mathematics minor, and Sunrose Shrethsa ’14, a physics and mathematics double concentrator, are using their summer research grant to investigate new possibilities in this dynamic field.

Spencer Olsson ’14,  a math concentrator with minors in physics and sociology, is spending this summer examining 28,000 rows of data on two fish parasites, a field of study normally researched by Hamilton’s biology department. Olsson is  applying a new physics research technique to the field of biology.