The Spring 2016 meeting.
Saturday, April 16
Embry –Riddle University
Prescott
The following was written by Jim Ward (our president).
It was a little bit windy but a sunny and cool day in Prescott for the AzAAPT Spring meeting. I had not been to the Embry-Riddle campus before. It is a beautiful campus situated just north of Prescott. They are building new science and lab facilities including a planetarium that looks like it is going to spectacular.
I want first of all thank our hosts for their hospitality and the warm welcome they gave us. A huge thanks to Dr. Padraig Houlahan and Karyn Casner. They went out of their way to make sure we had everything we needed to make the meeting run smoothly. They could not have been more gracious.
After the business meeting where we discussed some exciting plans for our Association (more about that later) we had the first workshop led by David Weaver (you always know with David it’s going to be good). We built coil guns out of disposable cameras. There are so many ways you can take this project in the classroom, there is a wealth of physics. And a bonus, it is a lot of fun – unless you inadvertently become the conduit for the capacitor to discharge – ouch. But hey, there is a great lesson there too.
Cheryl Dellai gave us an HLC update. That topic always generates a lot of discussion. here presentation can be found here.
On the way to lunch, Dr. Houlahan took us on a tour of Embry-Riddle’s wind tunnel lab which includes the supersonic wind tunnel. That was pretty cool to see.
Dr. Meyers gave a short presentation on scratch tests. It was very interesting and I can see how useful the scratch tests could be but due to some changes in the schedule, Dr. Meyers had to rush the presentation a bit. I think we need an encore presentation at the Fall meeting.
Next Jasmine Gill, a second year student at Embry-Riddle, who is also the youngest author within the LIGO collaboration that announced the detection of gravitational waves, gave a presentation on her research. Obviously, a very impressive young lady. The research is fascinating. We definitely did not have enough time for her presentation and we would welcome her back anytime for an update on her research. Her research presentation was so new that we cannot put it online because their findings have not been published yet - How Cool!
We finished the day at the Embry-Riddle’s flight simulators. That was a rush. Good thing no one dies in a flight simulator. Speaking for myself, and pretty much everyone else, we bounced that plane around pretty good. I have never had so much fun crashing an airplane.
Thanks again to our hosts, Dr. Padraig Houlahan and Karyn Casner, you were great. Thanks to the presenters for your time and dedication. Thanks to all of the attendees for being part of a great day of Physics.