Faculty

Cindy Blaha

Email: cblahacarleton.edu

As always the year has zipped by with lots of character building and opportunities for several fine trips to Washington, DC and Paris. The January AAS meeting in Washington was fabulous! I met more than a dozen current and former students plus a few Carls who had graduated before I joined the Department. It was great to catch up on what all of you are doing and to see so many of you flourishing in astronomy. In Paris I enjoyed being in THE Cassini Room and learning all about the workings of the "world's oldest modern observatory." Back in Olin, I've just finished up the pleasure of a demo-filled Waves class and am looking forward to Introductory Physics next term. I've been a faculty advisor to the Writing Across the Curriculum Program and plan to team-teach a course with Carol Rutz called "Writing Science." So, if any of you have favorites on effective communication in the sciences, just send them my way. On the home front, I continue to hang-out with my favorite rocket-scientist and our children. Katie is enjoying her life as a Carl and I continue to walk the fine line between parenthood and being a professor on the same campus. Jenny is in eighth grade and the whole family is building that unique character that happens when you have a middle schooler in your midst. I hope the New Year finds you all well and happy. Please continue to stay in touch and visit often. We enjoy your company whether it be virtual through the internet or live and in person.

Nelson Christensen

Email: nchristecarleton.edu

URL: http://physics.carleton.edu/Faculty/nelsonhome.html

It's been a good year here in Northfield and Carleton for us. Classes seemed to go well. I taught Medical Physics this term and had a great mix of physics, biology and chemistry majors in it. I am also working this month on setting up a Bell's Inequality experiment for Contemporary. Doing lots of gravity wave work for LIGO, and an MRI experiment at the U of M.

Family is good. Atticus is 9 and doing algebra and reading my A&N books. Conrad is 7 and getting fluent in Spanish. Amalie is 3 and never stops moving. Karla is doing her statistics work with the cancer group at Mayo. All in all a good year.

Rich Noer

Email: rnoercarleton.edu

In September I started into "phased retirement"--which means I teach half time for the next two years. But it's going to be pretty "lumpy"--this past term didn't feel much different from normal, as I was teaching electronics, a "new" course (meaning one I haven't taught in so long I had to do a lot of learning and re-learning!), with its lab. The first half of winter term will be light, but not the second, when I'll be doing the big Physics 115 (essentially the relativity and particles half of 22 or 122, for you old-timers). Then finally I get to relax spring term, with no formal teaching duties (though some comps and advising continue)--Raymonde and I hope to get in a short trip or two, perhaps to visit our son in California or even our daughter in Cameroon (in the Peace Corps).

Arjendu Pattanayak

Email: apattanacarleton.edu

Hello everyone! This last year, Kathleen and I continued to settle into Minnesota. Last winter (our first here) was remarkably mild, leaving us grateful but still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am starting to get used to the intense rhythms of Carleton's academic year and am confirming that I really enjoy teaching here. The Beowulf cluster I mentioned last time is finally functional on campus (shared with Dani Kohen in Chemistry) and now the challenge is to use it profitably--Drew Weitz ('01, CS) is helping with this as an Educational Associate.

But the big news for us is a little bit in the future--we are expecting, with a due date in late December. Life is going to change radically--stay tuned.

Kevin Pettit

Email: kpettitcarleton.edu

I am breathing a sigh of relief as I've finished my first term teaching by myself here at Carleton College. I just finished teaching P128--Introduction to Atomic and Nuclear Physics. It's a rather challenging class to teach because it starts out with the well-known work of Millikan but ends with some speculations concerning "quantum foam". I have to paint a picture of most of all physics being done today using a very broad paintbrush (and very little higher level mathematics). I had fun though!

In the Winter Term, I will to continue my book club for interested science students. We'll read "The Large, the Small and the Human Mind" by Roger Penrose. I have winter term off from teaching and I will be busy assembling my new sputter deposition system from which I'll be able to make magnetic tunnel junctions. I look forward to the Spring Term during which time I'll be teaching a junior/senior level class in my specialty&endash;solid state physics.

Bruce Thomas

Email: bthomascarleton.edu

I'm chairing the department this year, and then plan to start my phased retirement in June. Maybe then, finally, the piles of books and interesting projects that I have always wanted to turn to "someday" will quit growing and start to shrink. At least that's the plan. I spent a weekend in Vermont last summer at a workshop making a nested set of five wooden Shaker oval boxes. And, cleverly, I enrolled my wife in a broom-making workshop so that she didn't have time to cruise the local antique dealers while I was working on the boxes. Alas, she has made up for it by hauling back lots of trinkets on two trips to the Ukraine this fall, where she has conducted teaching workshops for university faculty.

Bill Titus

Email: btituscarleton.edu

Greetings to all. I'm on sabbatical leave for two terms this academic year and just returned from playing structural geologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where my daughter just happens to be a graduate student in structural geology. Ah, what a coincidence. Next term I'll be in residence in Northfield, but thankfully still on sabbatical. My cat will be very appreciative after a long lonely fall.

Joel Weisberg

Email: jweisbercarleton.edu

Greetings! A high point last year was a pulsar meeting in Crete in honor of Joe Taylor's (and Andrew Lyne's and Dick Manchester's--three of the pulsar greats)-- 60th birthdays. A great meeting, a beautiful setting, and 6 Carl physicists (hope you aren't insulted Steve & Steve): Steve Thorsett, Andrea Lommen (and her husband Steve who took Astro 10 so he counts too), Bob Benjamin, Craig Heinke, and me! (Steve took a picture of the other five of us, available at www.physics.carleton.edu/Faculty/Joel/astromeetings.html.) In the Fall I traveled to Arecibo for a meeting to participate in planning a big joint pulsar search in a few years with the new multibeam receiver. It will be interesting to see how so many of us prima donnas (like me and Andrea, to name two) will (or won't!) coexist on one project. We are still working on the 21 cm radio telescope kit and hope to have it operating on the roof of Olin soon. Ben and Janet are doing great --Ben just turned 6. He's a model in the recently sent out bookstore catalog--see if you can find his face behind his hand!

We were brokenhearted at the loss of Paul Wellstone and his family and staff in the blink of an eye, and we know that many of you were also deeply touched by his life. At a memorial service in the Chapel the evening of his death, I reminded everyone that he has a living legacy--the students he inspired.

I hope to see many of you at reunion and elsewhere. I have an alumni gig at Chaco Canyon next October. Wanna come?
Staff

Tom Baraniak

Email: tbaraniacarleton.edu

I am the new guy on second floor (the new Doug) doing the electronics and lab setup. This past year has been rather eventful for me. I left my job at the University of Minnesota Chemical Engineering Dept., my wife (Chemistry professor) Trish Ferrett and I moved back to Northfield, I've had several articles published in Circuit Cellar magazine, and most importantly, after a process of some paperwork and then some more, we have accepted the referral for our soon to be adopted son from Korea. Come sometime in February or March my life is going to change yet again with his arrival.

Everyone here in Physics, and on campus, have been welcoming and a pleasure to work with. Being new I am still getting to know Carleton. And Carleton is getting to know me, as there are fewer puzzled looks when people see me still wearing shorts though the winter winds blow.

My interests lie in space exploration and robotics, and I hope to have some projects going relating to both. These will involve the application of science, engineering, and education. I think they will be interesting and cool things to work on. After all, why should JPL have all the fun?

Ann Passe

E-mail: apassecarleton.edu

Another year has zoomed past with remarkable speed. It seems like yesterday the seniors were graduating, and now the current crop is preparing for comps. Soon we will be planning the third annual senior luncheon on St. Olaf turf. Last year we celebrated at the Ole Store, and the year before at the King's Room in the St. Olaf student center. We have decorated the spaces with Carleton balloons, pom-poms, streamers, kazoos and any other freebees that I can wrangle from the Alumni Office. If the noise level is any indication of a successful event, these lunches have far exceeded expectations.

Finally, I have made our last college tuition payment after 8 years of check writing. Steve Lewis was right, it is the largest pay increase I have ever received. My husband and I are spending our newfound wealth with travel adventures. Last spring break we spent two weeks in the Big Bend National Park area. This past summer we spent a month in British Columbia. We call it practice for retirement!

When you come to campus, make sure you stop in the office and say hi. I feel like I have come to know some of you after reading your greetings and up-dates during the past three years. Take care.

Warren Ringlien

E-mail: wringliecarleton.edu

Activity in the shops was quite as usual this year with various projects from most of the departments. Still turning out "C" clamps in the shop tutorial session. Just started tooling Kevin Pettit's HVAC research system which will be a challenge. I managed to win an event at the National aeromodeling championships last July so now I'll have to defend the title next fall.

Drew Weitz

E-mail: aweitzcarleton.edu

After graduating from the Computer Science department this June, I returned to Carleton and started working for the Physics department on July 1st. Aside from doing the day-to-day computer maintenance for the department, I'm also the system administrator of the new Beowulf cluster. Beowulf clusters are networks of machines running in parallel that can achieve super-computer performance without the excessive cost of a traditional super-computer. When not at work, I've been enjoying my new home of Minneapolis, and also getting to know my sister's (a one-time Carleton physics major) first child (and my first nephew!) Happy holidays, and New Year to all!