One Week Down

The first week of my last undergraduate semester didn't go so badly, although it did give me a slight taste of what is to come for the rest of this year.

I am taking two physics courses for credit and sitting in three others unofficially. That gives me Sr. Physics Lab, Astrophysics, E/M Theory, Astrobiology and Quantum Mechanics to worry about (total of 11 lecture hours and 6 lab hours per week), plus a weekly meeting with my research advisor (more below) and bi-weekly meetings for astrophysics journal club, physics club and physics club officers (I'm the VP). Plus occasional seminars here and there. Oh, and research to do.

When I stopped to talk with my research advisor, he told me he had come up with not one, but two (unrelated) projects for me to consider. One deals with NASA's AIM mission and the other with exoplanets. Both are way cool, but I suspect I will be going with the exoplanets one because it fits my interests and (very basic) foundation a bit better. So now I have another hundred or so pages of research papers and presentations to read plus some online work, preparatory to doing a lot more IDL coding. His hope is that the introductory work would keep me busy for the next two semesters (I'll have a lot more time after this one, since I'll have no classes at all this spring, most likely) and we would submit an official PhD thesis proposal(!!) next fall.

Of course, we've ignored (so far) the fact that I actually have to prepare for, take and suitably pass both the general and physics GREs to get into GMU's graduate program, but at least I have a direction in which to travel.

And some time during all this (3 days!), my darling children head back to school, so I probably should pay attention to them occasionally as well (plus their mommy).

School Bell's A-Ringing

First day of the fall semester today.

I started it off with a visit to my research adviser, who has not one, but two different PhD thesis-level projects in mind for me. Gift horse, anyone? One of them involves an active NASA mission. One is related to (but not directly involved with) my Charon work. The first one comes with funding, wherein I would draw a stipend (plus, presumably, funding for conference travel). The second has no funding itself, although Dr. Summers said he could probably spring for a couple conferences.

Now I have to decide between an interesting project I get paid for and a (somewhat more interesting) project that I won't necessarily get paid for. And since I could conceivably be working on whichever one I choose for the next 6-8 years (although presumably I would eventually find some funding for the latter project - except in the current anti-science administration, that's pretty well impossible), I need to choose pretty carefully. However, it's a good problem to have - rather too many projects than not enough (or an unhelpful research adviser).

After that meeting, and some chatting with various friends in the hallways, I headed to Senior Physics Lab. This promises to be quite an interesting class, with two half-hour lecture periods followed by 3-hour lab periods each week. Additionally, we can always get a key to the advanced physics lab to work independently whenever we wish. We each have to work solo (with a couple exceptions) on four different experiments throughout the semester. My first is a study of the Zeeman Effect on mercury vapor. On Wednesday, we have an oral pass/fail exam on our individual experiments which we must pass before we're permitted to begin work, then it's radiation safety education and quizzing next week and finally we can begin work.

Following lab I sat in on the first Introduction to Quantum Mechanics course. Although this course is packed to full (every seat taken), I have permission from the instructor to sit in on it unofficially. It is now a required course for all new Physics undergraduates. However, since I am running under an older catalog, it is only optional for me (I'm taking Astrophysics instead), but it is still a good idea to know the contents since a significant part of the physics GRE uses the knowledge. My main surprise in the class is the number of physics majors in there whom I swear I have never seen before. You'd think I would know (at least by sight) all the junior/senior level physics students by this point (since there are only a few dozen total physics undergraduates).

Tomorrow - three more classes (two audits, one for credit)!

Decision time approaches

As I enter my final semester as a physics undergraduate, there is a decision looming which I have put off for at least a year: What next?

My choices seem to be along the lines of:
- go back to slacking (the easy option)
- get a real job (the hardest option, in many ways)
- continue education

The final one comes with its own three options:
- aim to become a secondary education (6-12) physics teacher
- aim to become a university physics professor
- aim to become a researcher

Assuming that slacking and getting a real job are off the table for the moment, that leaves me with some complex choices to make, even if I stay at GMU for my continued education (UMCP is a far better physics campus, but I really dislike the idea of driving into MD each day for grad school).

GMU's College of Education and Development (CEHD) offers a Masters of Education in a variety of subjects, including physics. For admission, one needs 3 letters of recommendation, a goals statement and successful Praxis I exam results. The Praxis seems to essentially be a GRE for the education side of things. The LoRs will be interesting to achieve - I am not sure what they are to recommend (my physics knowledge? My teaching ability? My personality and work ethic?). I'm sure I can find three profs who attest to my hard work at school and in classes. Not much teaching experience, however (that's the whole point here!). The deadline for spring admission is November 1st. For next fall, it would be April 1st.

For either the professor or researching angle, I need a PhD. The work is essentially identical for either direction, only my concentration work would change. GMU's sparkly-new Physics PhD program requires acceptable scores (whatever that means!) in both the general GRE (fairly easy) and the physics GRE (very not easy). There are only fall admissions for the graduate program, which leaves me with an April 15th deadline.

Given that I am unlikely to get all my testing done as well as other paperwork within 2 months, the April deadlines are more achievable. That means I can get my various paperwork collected throughout this semester and schedule my test-taking in late winter or early spring (so as not to worry about studying for it during classes).

Now I need to find someone who can usefully advise me as to paths and suggestions of how to approach them. I've already had one person suggest I find a high school physics teacher and ask to sit in on classes just to watch how things go. (Alas, he also suggested I do NOT choose a specialist school like TJHSST, the only place I actually might have access to a physics teacher, because I know his wife!)

And, of course, after all this, there is no indication one way or another that I would be any good at research or teaching in any capacity. I already know I don't do well with teaching indifferent or uninterested students, which could be a challenge. On the other hand, research is undirected ultimately - a situation in which I also do not excel. That's what I get for redefining my existence in my 40s.

Update: Just after I posted this, I received email from my favorite professor, which included in part this sentence: "I have a potential Ph.D. thesis project if you are interested." That may help narrow down my decision somewhat!

Another Semester Ends

The Spring 2008 semester is over, the grades are posted. I hear you breathlessly asking, "How did it go?"

Not too badly.

While I only registered for 6 credits this semester (3 lecture, 3 research), I actually sat through 9 credits of lecture. One extra class was by invitation from my research advisor. The other less invited, but he did not seem to mind (after all, I was a more consistent attendee than half the class). The full rundown then...

Senior Research Project - I talked a bunch about my research project here. I did not do any more flux work since my last post, but did continue working on vapor pressures of certain molecules (N2, CH4, CO and a variety of C2H* species) at very low (30-60K) temperatures. I originally was asked to turn in a sort of journal of my efforts for the grade. Before the semester was out, however, Dr. Summers let me know I had already earned an A (yay me!) for my work, but he still wanted me to turn in a paper which might be suitable for publishing on the low temperature vapor pressures. I finished writing that today and will submit it tomorrow for his review/editing.

Modern Physics - This was a very interesting class -- a "survey" course (touching relatively lightly on a number of topics) covering special relativity, introductory quantum physics, Schrodinger's wave functions, perturbation theory and similar fun. My one big regret is that we did not get to the last part of the book, which deals with subatomic particles (quarks and things). That was what I was looking most forward to! The instructor, Dr. Karen Sauer, is engaging and effective. I enjoyed her teaching and look forward to having her again for Senior Physics Lab next semester. The tests were not easy - GRE-based multiple choice plus course-based quantitative questions. No equations were given (just like in the GRE), so we had to memorize all the formulas as well as knowing how to use them. I studied harder for the final exam (5 full days) than I have for any other exam I have ever taken. Result (including her substantial curve to get the class average up to a B): A+ for the course.

Thermal Physics - I just sat in this class, not signing up for it (or talking to the instructor about it) because I was told it was critical for an astrophysics career (it probably is). However, it is not (currently) required to graduate - just one of a list of electives - and I chose to take a second semester of research for more fun. The instructor, Dr. Peter Becker, was not bad, if occasionally a goofball (humor is good, though). The book, however, was horrible. It was written in 1965 and completely unsuitable to today's education environment - just page after page of text spamming your eyeballs without a gap. I could not take it and did not even crack the book after the first week or so. I still took very thorough notes throughout the semester in case it ever becomes important to me.

Atmospheric Physics - Another survey course! (Don't we ever get to learn the real stuff?) This one was taught by Dr. Summers and I sat in it at his request. As expected, it was an enjoyable class full of great slides and interesting information about how the atmosphere works.

All in all, not a bad semester, although I started losing the urge to be in school somewhere in April (about par for me). One more semester of undergraduate courses - currently scheduled for Senior Physics Lab and Introduction to Astrophysics, although I may sit in one or more other classes as well again. We'll see what happens!

Charon Research

Another semester nearly done and I have hardly posted at all. I'll do a full summary once grades are in. For now, my classes are essentially done (one more on Monday night). Now I just have to finish writing up the journal/log for my research project, which I just realized I have not actually talked about before. Fairly briefly, then...

My last research project (with advisor Dr. Shobita Satyapal), done in Spring 2007, was based predominantly on Spitzer Space Telescope (and some older) infrared observations of a variety of galaxies. In that project I did a fairly rough, low sample comparison of various methods of determining star formation rate in galaxies (infrared, UV, visible light, etc.). Ultimately, I determined that infrared was the way to go for a variety of reasons. I am not sure how valid my results were (this was all new to me), but I got some interesting reactions from Shobita and one of her grad students, so that's a plus.

This time around, I am working with Dr. Michael Summers, as I mentioned in an earlier post. He is working up a paper discussing the possibility of Charon having an atmosphere and the composition, density and lifespan of that atmosphere, if present. While the great bulk of the work (and all the theory) is his (and a collaborator's), he has had me running some mathematical models using the IDL programming language. Technically-speaking, I am not really doing Charon research for much of it, because a lot of the models I am running (like determining equilibrium vapor pressures for a variety of gases at very low temperatures) has nothing to do with Charon specifically. Some of it, my earlier work (I actually started this work last May), used Charon parameters, however, so that qualifies. (Current direction of conclusions: yes, Charon most likely does have an atmosphere, which is picks up in part from Pluto's evaporation while it is near enough to the sun.)

Since it is not really a full research project (I have no theory, no position, not much of anything), I am not sure how he will be grading it - hopefully just grading the quality of the programming output I did plus whatever journal I write up talking about my adventures making the models. He has used at least one of my output plots in a talk he gave to other atmospheric sciences, so I can't be too far off in my models.

One thing I have learned about doing this research is that advisors are very hard to contact! Both of my advisors have been very out of the loop with my daily activities. In Shobita's case, she delegated pretty much all of my handling to one of her post-docs. She was out of it enough that my conclusions were a surprise to her - she had not inquired as to my progress for many weeks prior to the final paper. I still have not gotten my graded paper back from her after almost a year of asking. In Mike's case, he is a very busy man - two active NASA missions (New Horizons, AIM), one hopefully soon-to-be-approved mission (ARES) as well as papers he is working on and his class time. It is lucky for me I am sitting in on his atmospheric physics class this semester - it gives me 10 minutes each week to talk to him on our way to the parking lot after class! He apparently has a good number of grad students (like 6-8) working for him, although I only know two of them - neither of which gets much face time either, so at least I know it is not just me.

Faculty Candidate Interviews Redux

The final candidate (on Wednesday, not Monday OR Tuesday) spoke on the formation of terrestrial planets beyond our solar system. The topic was interesting, but the speaker needs a lot more practice. He was personable, but clearly nervous and lacking some polish. We did not feel drawn to him as a teacher, nor did he seem especially interested in teaching.

Our final recommendation - hire the first candidate if they want a teacher, hire the third one if they want a researcher, higher the last one if the first two say no and do not hire the second one under any circumstances (sorry about that). We will see how it all goes. The faculty committee makes its decision tomorrow and passes the recommendation up the chain.

Faculty Candidate Interviews

One of the more interesting things the Physics & Astronomy Department at GMU does is get students involved with the hiring of faculty. Last Spring and again this month, I have been on the student committee responsible for interviewing the short list of candidates for new teaching positions. We go to seminars the candidates are giving at GMU, then participate in an hour-long, student-only interview session with the candidate. After seeing all the candidates, the student committee (about 4-6 of us) sends in our collective commentary on each one, along with our hiring priority preference (including any opinion against hiring). The hiring committee takes the recommendations of the student committee very seriously - the last few times they have given the first offer to the students' first choice (and they never offer a job to someone the students say not to hire, even if the other candidates all turn down offers).

Last year's candidates were not too exciting for me - largely based on fields in physics (including neuroscience) where I had little interest and less knowledge (or maybe vice-versa). This year, however, the candidates are all in the field of planetary science, which is awesome.

Our first candidate presented some current research based on magnetic fields (called crustal fields) on the surface of Mars. This is new research, as the mission responsible for gathering the data is still orbiting the planet. He was very excited about his topic and a good speaker. Even better, based on our interview of him later on, he seems like he would be an interesting and engaging professor for freshman and sophomore students, especially those not already in a science field (hopefully getting them to choose a science major).

The second candidate was a letdown from the first. His research, on the possibility of earth-like planets in stable, habitable obits around binary stars, was fairly interesting (and the models of how planets may be forming in those systems pretty cool), but he definitely lacked the excitement value of the first one. His interview did not improve matters. We rate him a distant last place.

Today's candidate discussed the current mission around Titan (and various other Saturnian moons) and the fact that, instead of finding 300m of methane seas around the whole planet, they found sand dunes! There seems to be a lot of methane missing and they are trying to figure out where it went (including the most obvious conclusion - the models are broken). He was an engaging speaker (after a shaky start) and very personable. I had lunch with him and several other faculty members and my opinion only improved. We feel he would be a decent teacher (he does not have the experience the first one does) and an incredible research advisor. I'd say he is either tied for first or a very close second place.

The final candidate will do his schtick next week (Monday or Tuesday - I'd better check). I almost hope he's not quite as good as the two we already like - it isn't too useful to send the hiring committee a recommendation to hire 3 of the 4 people they sent us (when just getting 1 of them will be tough).

PhD Comics

One of the more interesting comic sites I have been redirected to (this one from the Bad Astronomer) was to PhD Comics, a strip devoted to the life of a grad student. From what I have seen, PhD is, like Dilbert, all too accurate, even where it seems like it should be hyperbole. I find it very humorous, even though it makes me worry about my own potential future as a grad student!

Spring 2008

A new semester begins tomorrow. As I mentioned earlier, this time I am foregoing the wisdom of my advisors (sorry!) and dropping Thermal Physics in order to pick up another semester of research, this time under the direction of Dr. Michael Summers.

I purchased my text book for the Modern Physics class from Amazon. Got it "used but really new" for half price. Seems mint condition to me - the pages are still even slightly stuck together from cutting! There is a small binding error - the periodic table on the inside back cover is skewed and will need to be trimmed or, more likely, scanned and repasted in correctly so I don't twitch every time I see it.

That is actually my only truly required text. I will be semi-auditing (showing up when I want for as long as I want) an atmospheric physics class, but I can check that book out from the library. I may try to sit in on the Thermal Physics class - we'll see what vibes I get from the unknown instructor when I sit in on tomorrow's class (I'm still technically registered for that class, not research). If I plan to do that regularly, I may have to see about picking up the text.

My big problem so far is that the Physics department redid their web site. While I applaud the move (the only one was very old tech and hardly updated), they seem to have broken more than they fixed. The new format is wiki-based, which I suppose is fine, but there is a lot of information which was there before that seems to be missing now. I suppose it will appear over time, but I am a proponent of having all your data set up before relaunching a site, especially in the week before classes start when some folks (ahem) are trying to dig up class information!

Fall 2007 Finals

I survived another round of finals with better-than-expected results.

E/M Theory was predictably nightmarish, with a full semester of memorization required and no hints as to what might be needed. As it turned out, he did not ask any questions at all from the last two chapters, which is just plain silly (but hardly my only complaint of the instruction), as those were the only two chapters we had not been tested on. That did not keep me from totally blowing two questions, but they were not hard questions - just happened to require formulas I did not memorize (of the couple hundred possible). I had already estimated that I only needed a 45% on the final to receive a B for the course (but an 85% needed for an A), so the final grade surprised me. Course grade: A-

Classical Mechanics was not as tough as it could have been, although I could have done better. Just as in E/M, I blew two questions, but in this case, it was just plain brain meltdown. They were not hard questions; I was just under temporary idiocy. Thanks to the marvels of heavy curving, I managed to come out on top. Course grade: A

Introduction to Applied Mathematics finally started getting interesting in the last few chapters (Complex Analysis). I studied the hardest for this exam for some reason, going over nearly all of the suggested practice problems throughout the entire semester. Given that I was going into the final with a low- to mid-80s average, I was surprised at the final grade. I suspect I managed to pull off nearly 100% on the final. Course grade: A-

My cumulative GPA has now been scratched (3.95), which is bad news in some ways, although still quite good, of course. As long as it was a perfect 4.00, I had a vested interest in having the best scores in class - now an A- does not seem as bad. Fortunately, I have only 4 more classes (well, two lecture-based classes, a major lab and a research project) remaining.

Out, Out Damned Apathy!

Another day of studying nearly done.

On a positive note, while firmly not studying earlier today, I was analyzing my remaining classes required to graduate. Looks like I can dump two of the courses I was not really interested in anyway (Thermal Physics and Quantum Mechanics) for one class I am interested in (Astrophysics) and a second term of Senior Research. While dumping those two classes goes directly against an advisor's suggestion (because of applicability to future graduate studies), at this point grad school is not looking like a highly-probable event, so I am more interested in taking courses of interest than courses of future necessity.

I sat down with Dr. Michael Summers (my former astrobiology teacher) and we discussed some nice possibilities for research next semester. While many options are open, I will probably stick to work I started earlier this year--mathematical modeling of potential atmospheres for Pluto's moon, Charon. It is interesting work and I also get to do some programming in IDL, which is not too bad (if substantially different from what I am used to in C/C++).

In any case, I am sufficiently recharged to finish studying tonight for tomorrow's Applied Math and Classical Mechanics finals. I still cannot muster much desire to study for E/M Theory (Thursday exam), though. (Knowing I only need about a 44% on it to get a B in the class does not help much!)

Finals Week

It's that lovely time of the semester - trying to remember things your prof mentioned in one class back in August and September which you hoped you would never see again. Alas for the Comprehensive Final Exam. Of the three finals (two back-to-back), only one is not comprehensive (which is good - that one will be hard enough).

Unfortunately, E/M is comprehensive and that is very possibly the hardest course I have had so far. Adding to the pain, the prof has indicated that no equations will be given and refused to tell us which of the over 200 formulas covered this semester we might need to have memorized for the final exam.

Math should be relatively painless (only relatively - dealing with Green's and Stoke's respective theorems can often be painful, even though they are meant to make things easy).

Mechanics is the only exam that is not comprehensive, which is good for us - with a class average of only around 60% for the prior two exams, I think he was worried that nobody would even bother showing up for a comprehensive final.

A full sense of apathy has taken over my brain, which is not helping matters. Ah well... back to studying. Now, was it Green's 1st or 2nd Identity which had the Laplacian of g? Oh, right, it's in both, but in a different place... sigh.

Continuing Education

Courses continue in a sort of lackadaisical fashion (in terms of my participation, not necessarily the course information).

Classical Mechanics has gotten around to Orbital Mechanics as of today, so we could be seeing some cool stuff now. (Kepler's Laws out of the way.)

E/M Theory is just plain uninteresting. I don't think a single chapter topic has sparked an interest.

Applied Math is actually interesting right now. We're on Complex Analysis which is, a) surprisingly easy (considering the topic name) and b) sort of fascinating, the way it can be applied to the number work we're all used to seeing, but revealing a depth behind how things work which was pretty much hidden in all prior coursework.

I have registered for the next semester already - Thermal Physics and Modern Physics with Applications. One taught by prof unknown to me, the other by someone I have never had but respect based on my encounters with her to date.

Two other courses offered next semester (of the slim variety available) look interesting, but the most-intriguing of the two, Atmospheric Physics, is only offered Mondays from 7:20pm-10pm, which is not intriguing. The other, Physics of the Interstellar Medium, might work, though - it takes place immediately following my (current) last class of the day. I might see if I can get permission to sit in and listen to the lectures without actually signing up; I have no desire to receive credit for - or pay for - classes that are not necessary for me to graduate. I suppose that makes me somewhat of a leech, but I consider it more a pursuit of random knowledge - I would go broke very quickly if I paid for all the random information I access.

Second to last mid-term exam in a week (E/M). At least, I think it's the second to last. I know I have another Math exam (some day) and that I do not have another Mechanics exam (prior to finals). I am pretty certain this is the last "mid-term" for E/M as well. Bleh.

Beyond the Mid-Terms

Well, I am glad THAT week is over. All three exams passed. A+ in E/M, B in Math (highest grade in class, though - I don't know if he curves) and unknown in Mechanics. No idea how he's going to curve that test when most of us did so poorly. I did complain about the one problem, however (the only one I did very badly on) - while I am sure he fully desires us to have every equation from Physics I memorized, he has been teaching long enough that he should not expect it. Having to pull a friction equation out of my head (from Spring 99 - same teacher, coincidentally) without any warning that such would be needed was a bit of unnecessary stress during the exam. I am guessing that I am running about a B/B+ in that class, only because of the curve (my exam scores are lousy, but they are still better than the average).

After that, it was slacking for the long weekend (something I am way too good at) and then last-minute prep for Halloween. On the positive side, I finally got to see Comet Holmes through both my 16x70 binocs and my 8" SC telescope. Way cool. Too bad I did not get everything set up until after all the trick-or-treaters were done for the night!

Mid-Term Hell

Since I am taking three courses this semester, of course all three profs must decide to give exams in the same week.

E/M down... Mechanics and Applied Math to go. Either E/M was a lot easier than I expected it to be (and that it should be), or I have utterly failed the test. We'll see!

Thursday night is de-stress night. I don't care where I am or what else I may be doing, I will be doing a lot of relaxing in any way I can find.

First Exams Passed

The first exams have come and gone in both my physics classes (math still to come). I did tolerably well (barely, in my view).

In Mechanics, I completely blanked on a very easy problem, which ended up comprising most of the points lost (15 of 21 points lost out of a total of 90 on the exam). Lousy score, but apparently most of the class did much worse, so it should turn into a B or even A - the professor has not stated how he will curve things. E/M went slightly better 88% (B+). No curving apparent in this class, but he is pretty generous on grading.

As always, I will continue to do things at an unreasonably late time period - apparently, one cannot entirely beat procrastination out of one's system. At least I do not (usually) wait until the night before to do homework anymore (although slacked two extra days this week - damned Halo 3!).

Also as always, the Physics and Astronomy Club scheduling is problematic for me. Meeting times are either Tuesday late afternoon (giving me a 3-4 hour break on campus without too much to do - I suppose I could study!) or Wednesday afternoon, which conflicts with Beta's chess club (for which I am a volunteer helper). I'll try to make all I can! Fortunately, Astrophysics & Space Physics Journal Club is perfectly scheduled (mid-day on alternate Wednesdays. Now if I could just get the rest of the world to schedule to my convenience.

Typical Procrastination

In my typical fashion, I have put off any work on this blog until a moment of boredom. This time it took me just shy of a year - that may be a record for computer laziness for me.

I'm in my third semester back at GMU - only two more to go after this one until the B.S. in Physics is mine. While I have slacked on the blogger aspect, I did at least keep a log. Unfortunately, that's on my desktop machine and I am sitting here with my MacBook at Conservatory Conservatory while Beta daughter (second-born of the Twin Dragons for whom this blog is named) takes her lessons, so no reference notes. Look for more details of the past two semesters "later."

This time out, I am taking Classical Mechanics, Electromagnetic Theory and Intro. to Applied Mathematics. The Math and E/M Theory courses required as core courses. Mechanics is on the Electives list - the standard "pick 12 credits from this list of classes" thing. While my preference would be to take something more interesting to me - Intro to Astrophysics is a big one available this semester - my advisors have suggested Mechanics as a better foundation for ANY field of physics I might go into later on, including astrophysics. So here I am.

The big coincidence of the semester is that Classical Mechanics, essentially a sequel to University Physics I (just at a much higher level - Junior level vs. Freshman), is being taught by the same prof who I had for Physics I back in Spring 1999. It's also odd that one student sharing both my physics classes is, by my reckoning, a first semester sophomore and another, also in both of these classes is a last semester senior - a very odd mix for a Junior-level course.

So far, it is not stressing me too much - but the first exams will be in about two weeks (and looks like two on the same day, lucky me). Those always generate stress for me because I usually put off my textbook reading until exam time. (Yes, I should have learned by now. Some things do not ever change.)

Spring 2007

(This post has been backdated to put it the proper order sequentially. It was actually written sometime in early 2007.)

Courses:
• MATH203 – Matrix Algebra – Instructor: James F. Lawrence. A somewhat rambling instructor, the issue isn’t helped by a number of very rude students who heckle him on occasion. Grade: A.
• PHYS262 – University Physics III (no lab this semester, though) – Instructor: Robert Ehrlich (Physics Dept. Chair). Seemed much more interesting this time than I remembered from my first attempt at it in Spring 2000. Grade: A.
• ASTR428 – Relativity and Cosmology (Removed from course plan 12/1/2006) – Instructor: Joseph Weingartner. Even though this course requires Physics III (which I am taking the same semester), and parts of it not taught until the end of the semester at that (modern physics), Joe recommended I take it. He classifies it as very hard, but it is only offered every odd Spring semester, so it’s either now or 2009! He recommended I study up on Maxwell’s Equations (the differential forms), applicable Physics III material (relativity, etc.), vector calculus (esp. the Del operator) and start reading David Griffith’s “”Introduction to Electrodynamics,” which is the textbook for PHYS305 (Electromagnetic Theory), which I am not due to take until at least Fall 2007. I will have only two weeks to evaluate the course for difficulty before the Drop date passes for no tuition cost. Ultimately, it turned out better to not take it – not because of the difficulty, but due to time constraints on other upper level classes, several of which are also only offered every other Spring. Unfortunately, I am not likely to get this course now until perhaps as a graduate student, if pursue my grad work at GMU.
• PHYS408 – Senior Research – Instructor/Advisor: Shobita Satyapal. I would be doing this research anyway this semester. However, instead of being paid for it, it will give me three credits towards my graduation requirements. At the end of the semester, a paper and presentation (before faculty and students) was required. Technically, my first senior-level course, but I will save the real “senior” celebration for when I take an actual 400-level lecture or lab course (402, 407), likely in Fall 2008. My project ended up as a study of various methods for determining star formation in other galaxies (concentrating on infrared methods, but also addressing some visible light and ultraviolet). End result - not a statistically-significant sample, but my results showed that infrared made a far-better spectrum for this study than anything else. Grade: A

Fall 2006

(This post has been backdated to put it the proper order sequentially. It was actually written sometime in early 2007.)

Back in the action. Funny how all the other students look so much younger than they even did last time. (What a difference between looking at them with a 33-year-old’s eyes in Spring 1999 versus my now-ancient 41-year-old’s eyes.) Oy vay.

Since I am technically a senior (those Temple credits again), I get a lot of senior-related mail (and I get to register for courses first!), such a graduate information announcements and such. I even got put on a listserv for postgraduate fellowship information, which they do for GMU’s “most accomplished undergraduates” (must be the 4.0 GPA). Thanks in large part to all those extra emails, I have become pretty psyched up about grad school and have begun to do prep work for it now already. Anything which keeps my enthusiasm active is good. I do not want to backslide into heavy fiction reading again or, even worse, into computer games.

The only bad thing about being back nearly full-time at school is that it cuts heavily into my physical hobbies – kung fu, bicycling, etc. I need to come up with a way to add workouts back into my schedule without giving up family time! I suspect this will eventually result in getting up at 6 AM (or earlier) in order to do some physical stuff then and still be back in time to get the kids up for school at 7.

Publications:
Scientific American: We have been getting this for years, of course, although they target the writing for a very general audience. I may drop it next time the subscription comes up. There are publications I can read which are more appropriate to my studies.

Technology Review (MIT): Very interesting, but also not oriented towards hard science (although it reports on some of it).

Science: I joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS.org) as a professional (need to be a full-time student for student access – bugger!). That gets me the weekly Science magazine, which definitely contains current, high-end research papers (most of which are entirely over my head) as well as online access to every issue of the magazine back to its first issue in July 1880 (funded by Thomas Edison).

Courses:
PHYS262 – University Physics II (audit) – Instructor: Neil Goldman. I backed up a semester in Physics for fear of being totally lost. It was probably a good idea – in fact, backing up to Physics I would even have been a good idea if I wanted to lose yet another semester. The first exam went well. No dropping out now anyway, but at least it’s not for grade. The instructor is mediocre – while I do not actively dislike him, I almost certainly will avoid taking any class by him in the future. Second exam went poorly, for which I blame the instructor in large part. Due to conflicting schedules (Astrophysics journal review on alternate Thursdays) and my (now) dislike of the instructor, I am ditching all recitations of this class and will no longer bother to show up for exams. The last month of classes I pretty much skipped altogether.

MATH214 – Differential Equations (audit) – Instructor: Stephen Saperstone. Back for a third time with him! He sure looks a lot older than he did last time. Oh wait, so do I. Oh well. I still enjoy his teaching, although I hate some of the Java apps he likes. (Maple 10 rocks!) I started slacking on homework about 2/3 of the way through and due to a time crunch (he brought his last exam forward two days just as the last Astrobiology exam moved back a week to the same day, plus normal weekend/family duties), I decided to ditch the last two exams (because of the study time involved).

ASTR301 – Astrobiology (credit) – Instructor: Mike Summers. This was my only course for credit this semester and my first junior-level course (301). Mike is a good, personable instructor (and a scientist on three separate NASA missions or pre-missions at once – New Horizons, ARES and AIM) and he is actually generating some interest for me in this topic, which I did not even know existed as a science before picking courses for this semester. The hard part (maybe) is that the course is so much different than anything I have taken for a long, long time. No number crunching. No equations, theorems and procedures to memorize. Test questions are answered in sentence or small paragraph format (no calculators needed!). Only 7 students total in the class, which is also an unusual format for me – I like the feel of it. Biggest problem is the biology orientation of the course (unsurprising, given the topic) – biology was never really my strong point and it shows in how easily those chapters lose me. Grade: A.

Research:
Worked with Dr. Shobita Satyapal and her post-doc Brian O'Halloran to learn some astrophysics-related tools (CUBISM, SMART) which I will use next semester. Did some data crunching, but ultimately did not use any of that information.

Notes:
After much course research and discussions with advisors Philip Rubin (physics) and Joe Weingartner (astronomy), I have come up with a course load for the remaining semesters here. I could conceivably graduate as early as Spring 2008, but that would require a vastly overloaded schedule, especially in Fall 2007 (15 credit hours, including a 9-hour lab section). Since I am not likely to be able to sustain that kind of workload, I have opted for a graduation target of Fall 2008, using 9 credits in each of the 2007 semesters and then 13 credits total in 2008. That should allow me to keep up my side of the family support without proceeding unreasonably slow in my coursework.

Spring 2006

(This post has been backdated to put it the proper order sequentially. It was actually written sometime in early 2007.)

I applied to GMU to enter as a Returning Student. Got accepted with no problem (sure, it has been over 6 years, but I also have a 4.0 GPA). Began studying some calculus to try to get back into the swing of things, but it fell to the wayside (no surprise). Continued wasting my life in computer games until May or June, when I gave them up (hopefully) for good. Unfortunately, this was just before the kindergarten school year let out, which kept me too busy for the rest of the summer to concentrate on studying. Heading back to school cold!