Faculty

Cindy Blaha

Email: cblaha@carleton.edu

Life here in Northfield has been good this year. Jenny started at the high school and is vainly trying to avoid the stigma of having two nerdy physicists for parents. Kate is a junior history major at Carleton and is the self-proclaimed “token humanist” in the family. The highlight of the year was a two-week road-trip I took with the girls to the southwest. In a trip akin to “Thelma & Louise Meet Bill Nye, The Science Guy”, we traveled through mountain passes (sorry if any of you were behind me on those mountain roads…) and stayed in Flagstaff while I worked on some great data on M33. We all “built character” and had a fine time. Back in Olin, things are going well and I’m happy to say that I’m back teaching Astro 110 and “Physics 114: Gravity and the Cosmos” this year plus co-teaching a new course called “Writing Science” in the spring. I look forward to hearing from you all. Take care and have a wonderful new year!

Nelson Christensen

Email: nchriste@carleton.edu

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

It's been a good year. Family is doing well. Kids are growing rapidly. Carleton life is great. Having another fun year teaching Atomic and Nuclear, Optics and Contemporary. Gravity wave research with LIGO is rolling along well, although no detections yet. I just returned from a trip to one of the LIGO observatories for a data run, and two of our seniors went as well. I had a blast over the summer doing an experiment at the University of Minnesota. We shot a 5 MeV electron beam down the barrel of an MRI magnet. We imaged the electron beam as it went through different materials; the long-term goal is to be able to image a tumor and the radiation beam that may be going through it. This way you could be sure you are hitting the target. It was a wild and fun experiment. Nate Pogue (03) and I built some of the equipment here at Carleton. Cross country skiing in the Arb is great too—all is well in Northfield

Rich Noer

Email: rnoer@carleton.edu

I look ahead to my coming retirement in June with mixed emotions. I’ll miss the sustained interaction with Carleton students, stimulating and responsive as they continue to be. But I’ll welcome a less structured life, without the daily press of classes to prepare and work to grade—indeed, the past year of “phased retirement” (half-time teaching) has served to whet my appetite for more free time to read, travel, and take up the piano once again. And Raymonde and I will continue living in our Northfield home of 35 years, right across from the Carleton campus—with time to go to all those talks, concerts, and movies that I’ve so often been too busy for!

Arjendu Pattanayak

Email: apattana@carleton.edu

Hello again! As promised last year, an addition to our family: Meera Grace Pattanayak was born Jan 3rd 2003 (first day winter term, during my scheduled classy class!) and life hasn’t been the same since for Kathleen and me. Meera is already toddling around at high speeds, and can be regularly found doing physics experiments, such as verifying the existence of gravitational forces on her food while seated in her high chair. We also bought and moved into a late nineteenth-century Victorian house in Northfield, in another big transition. So life has been pretty busy, but fun. Teaching and research continue apace, and on occasional visits for seminars and conferences. I have begun to experience the pleasure of running into Carls and finding out more about the history of this great Department. I also had some great conversations with those, like Tom Moore ’76, who have come back here for talks. I look forward to many more of these encounters.

Bruce Thomas

Email: bthomas@carleton.edu

I've begun a three-year phased retirement and am exploring the meaning of "half-time". Predictably, I've found that the work expands to fill all of the time available. I'm about to whisk off for 12 days in Ukraine as a "spouse" while my wife conducts some teaching workshops in Kiev and Odessa. I hope to explore those cities while she works. In anticipation, I've spent a couple of weeks resurrecting my 45-year-stale efforts to learn Russian. Alas, it still looks like Greek to me.

Bill Titus

Email: btitus@carleton.edu

It's hard to believe that another year has passed—it seems to violate special relativity. Teaching and research manage to occupy my time. This fall I taught a first year seminar on cellular automata and the class had a phone interview with Stephen Wolfram, which was a wonderful experience. This summer I'm planning to spend a month on a island off of Maine, participating in a gravity survey with my daughter, Sarah, and several other geologists. I'm really looking forward to the company and the seafood.

Kris Wedding

Email: kwedding@carleton.edu

I thoroughly enjoyed my first term as a visiting assistant professor at Carleton. It is a challenge being away from my husband Jeff who remains back in the bay area, but we're making use of unlimited cell-phone minutes and getting to know the SFO-MSP flight schedules. I got to learn, I mean teach, advanced classical mechanics this fall. We started the term testing our brachistochrone prediction on a beautifully crafted ramp Warren made for us and ended the term mesmerized by a Wilberforce pendulum. I also taught a section of the Atomic and Nuclear lab, passing the joys of neutron activation of silver quarters onto a new generation of students, and even fit in a few introductory labs. This winter and spring I look forward to wowing the premeds with a host of medical physics examples and applications. Best wishes, everyone!

Joel Weisberg

Email: jweisber@carleton.edu

It’s always a great pleasure to hear from you and to see you. This fall I led an alumni archaeoastronomy trip to Chaco Canyon, NM, and had the pleasure of being with physics majors Roger Johnston and Randy Ellingson, along with lots of other wonderful Carls. I continue to love being here. I have begun teaching a science, technology, and public policy course, which is extremely rewarding. I had the pleasure of co-teaching it with Prof. Rob Rossi of the Chemistry Department last spring, and soloed this fall. I hope to create additional ENTS (Environment and Technology Studies) policy and energy courses over the next several years, trying in a small way to fill the hole left by Mike Casper’s retirement. I’ve also been regularly teaching the second half of our intro physics course (the special relativity part), using Tom Moore’s stunning text. Tom came for a few days and gave several outstanding lectures, including “General Relativity in a Nutshell” to my students. Janet and Ben are doing well. Ben is now a first grader and is learning to read and write. He continues to be a tremendous joy for us. We are all looking forward to a sabbatical all next school year in Sydney, Australia.

Former Faculty

Kevin Pettit

Email: kpettit@colorado.edu

Phone: (720) 565-0858

Address: 1395 Alpine Ave., Boulder, CO 80304

Hello! I am very pleased with my recovery from a car accident in 1998 and many doctors and therapists have told me that my recovery from these injuries is better than any recovery that they have ever seen. I left Carleton in July and moved back to Boulder, where my son Andrew lives. I miss my friends and teaching at Carleton but I am happy because I have moved back to my hometown. I am applying to the University of Colorado in Boulder Continuing Education Division to teach introductory physics online. This will allow me to review my lecturing before I give them to my students. I am excited about this prospect! I have written a book about my recovery; my book “Rambling Down Life’s Road? with a brain injury” is available for purchase from the publisher at www.xlibris.com. I also have become quite active in my church and I am organizing the study group on the Gospel of Thomas, a text from the first century that many scholars feel is a more realistic description of the sayings of Jesus than is presented in some chapters in the Bible. I am also looking into ways that I can help student with disabilities become more exposed, educated, and involved in science. Despite all the barriers that I’ve been given, my life moves on and I approach it with enthusiasm!

Bob Reitz

Email: bjreitz@charter.net

Address: 11 Bunday Court, Northfield, MN 55057

I look back on many wonderful years teaching at Carleton with nostalgia. I can’t imagine a finer group of students, especially our majors. I’ve enjoyed a number of years of retirement with lots of travel and much active community involvement, which I was unable to do at an earlier age. As I write this as I’m reminded of many departmental colleagues over the years who have enriched the college. In particular to mention a few, Bob Kolenkow and Tom Philips in the early 60’s, Mike Casper, Rich Noer and Bruce Thomas in later 60’s (all of whom are retired or in phased retirement), and Bill Titus in 1970. What a boon for the college when we became a Department of Physics and Astronomy in 1972, especially with the addition of Joel Weisberg and Cindy Blaha. Meanwhile the department continues on with a capable and dedicated staff. While family commitments often involve me elsewhere at reunion time, I am always delighted to see or hear from you.

Staff

Tom Baraniak

Email: tbarania@carleton.edu

This past year my wife (Chemistry professor) Trish Ferrett and I welcomed our adopted son Adam from Korea into his new family. He is now a toddler and cruises the carpet with boundless energy. He is so much fun that we are adopting a sibling for him and are awaiting the arrival of a second son from Korea, in February or March of 2004. Six hours of sleep is the norm (ok, sometimes a luxury), but being a parent is the greatest experience there is. A fun project here has been to build a remote control that operates the 16" telescope's revolving dome on Goodsell. The previous control dragged a cable around and was an electrical hazard to the operator. The new remote looks like something out of the Jetsons. New equipment is being introduced in the intro labs, specifically the Vernier series of lab interfaces. Since I am building most of the new hardware I'll be busy for quite a while. In my shop at home I'm working on a home monitoring system that lets me know if doors are unlocked, when the furnace filter needs changing, and when the water softener salt is low, among other things. Adam likes the lights and buttons that are part of the system, as well as playing with my robots and other shop gizmos.

Ann Passe

Email: apasse@carleton.edu

This may be my last newsletter as I am seriously considering retirement in 2004. After 64 Minnesota winters, I am ready to try something warmer. We spend last summer in Oregon and that looked “pretty darn good” to me. Thank you for your support and help during the past 4 years, you have made this job a delight, and difficult to leave. If there are any corrections or deletions to your newsletter contribution, send me an email and I will "fix it." I

Warren Ringlien

Email: wringlie@carleton.edu

The students enrolled in Contemporary Physics had the opportunity to shape metal into a "C" clamp again this year. A couple of students have requested an opportunity to do more hands on-shop work. One student is working on a model fuel cell car that is an interesting project. Shop projects still cover a range of projects from making soil-testing probes to hanging the Halloween bat in the display case. For those of you interested in camping/scouting, I built a fire without matches at the annual department picnic, and have gained an appreciation for some of the skills people had before metal and electricity appeared.

Drew Weitz

Email: aweitz@carleton.edu

I have now begun my second year as the “Technical Assistant” for the Physics department. While this means that I spend a lot time doing normal “support” for the department, I’ve also had a number of additional fun projects come through my door, like helping the students in the introductory courses make, edit, and add music / effects to movies (with the help of iMovie & iDVD) for their final lab projects. I’m always surprised at how creative the groups are, and really enjoy watching the final versions at the end of year screening. This year has also been an exciting year for me personally, as my fiancé and I have begun planning our wedding for this upcoming June. Best wishes to all. Happy holidays and New Year!