Physics

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Physics majors Christian Burns ’20 and Jordan Hamilton ’22 participated in a summer-long research study alongside Assistant Physics Professor Robert Nazarian, PhD, on the global impacts of ocean mixing in submarine canyons. Often tens of miles long, submarine canyons are suggested to be regions of intense ocean mixing, a process that is responsible for sustaining the ocean’s circulation, as well as the global climate system.

Utilizing a high-resolution ocean topography map and computational model for energy fluxes to calculate the total amount of ocean mixing occurring in submarine canyons located along the continental shelf, the researchers set out to determine the total amount of energy that is lost in marine canyons as a result of this mixing.

The internal structure of nucleons, called protons and neutrons, is still vastly unknown to scientists. Many laboratories dedicated to the field of nuclear physics are still trying to get a better understanding of these particles. One such lab, Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia, is one of the leading facilities in the world studying how quarks, the fundamental components of most particles, are distributed within the nucleons.

For his research project, physics student Richard Capobianco '19 worked under the mentorship of professor Angela Biselli, PhD, to study the optimal configuration for an upcoming experiment at Jefferson Lab that would reduce the background noise coming from nuclear electrons – noise that could inhibit the physicists’ ability to produce legible results. He also aided researchers by performing data quality tests for each run of the detector. Towards this end, he compiled relevant data tables displaying significant results from each run into a centralized location, making the results more accessible, in addition to providing an easier method of seeing how the results of the experiment vary between runs of the detector.