"Success can only come to you by courageous devotion to the task lying in front of you." -C.V. Raman

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work,
 but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Research opportunities, a hallmark of the Gettysburg College Physics Department, include summer research on and off campus, independent and collaborative research with faculty, and special projects that may incorporate work in the Observatory and Hatter Planetarium.  Colloquia enhance these opportunities.

Colloquia**

Colloquia presentations take place throughout the academic year. These instructive, thought-provoking lectures and discussions on current topics in astronomy and physics are open to the public, as well as to all students, faculty, administrators and staff of Gettysburg College.

Given by scientists from colleges and universities, government and industry, as well as by Gettysburg faculty and senior physics majors, past topics have included the physics of boomerangs, chaos, general relativity, plasma, astrometric inquiry from other observatories, the physics and chemistry of mesoscopic matter, high resolution imaging, holography, the top quark, solar sea power, superconductivity, the super collider, magnetic monopoles, medieval astronomy and much, much more.

For science majors, these colloquia offer a valuable opportunity to explore fields of interest and potential job opportunities.

Colloquia for Spring 2012:

Friday, February 24, 3:00 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
     Ken Krebs, Department Chair, Franklin and Marshall College
     The Photovoltaic Effect: the Physics behind Converting Sunlight into Useful Electric Power

Friday, March 2, 3:00 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
    Matthew Beaky, Astrophysics, Juniata College, 
    Investigations into the Origins of the O'Connell Effect in Eclipsing Binary Star Systems

Friday, March 30, 3:00 p.m., Masters Hall 208:
     Matthew van Adelsberg, Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Tech, TBA

Friday, April 13, 3:00 p.m., Masters 110 (Mara Auditorium):
     Laurence A. Marschall, Professor Gettysburg College
     The Transit of Venus: The Space Race of the 19th Century

Thursday, April 19, 4:00 p.m., Masters Hall 208:
     Jason Wright, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Penn State University, 
     Multiple Planet Systems and the Search for Solar System Analogs

Friday, May 4, 4:00 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
     John P. Giannini, Jr., Class of 2012
     Cobalthexamine Induced DNA Condensation

Friday, May 4, 4:20 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
     Alexander R. Peters, Class of 2012
     Construction, Testing and Modeling the MoNA-LISA

Colloquia for Fall 2011:

Friday, November 4, 4:00 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
    Michael Strickland, Gettysburg College, Quantum Chromodynamics at Five Trillion Degrees Kelvin

Thursday, November 10, 4:00 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
    Michael Murray, University of Kansas, Creating a Small Copy of the Early Universe

Friday, December 2, 4:00 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
    Irina Sagert, Michigan State University, Nuclear Matter at Extreme Densities - Neutron Stars and
    Supernovae

Thursday, December 8, 11:30 a.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
    Dennis Bazow, '12, Bottomonium Suppression in Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions
    Lauren Nowicki, '14, Quantum Optics for the Undergraduate Laboratory

Thursday, December 8, 4:00 p.m., Masters Hall 110 (Mara Auditorium):
    John Harris, Yale University, Recreating the Primordial Quark-Gluon Soup

Come find out what physics and astronomy are all about!!

**[latin colloquy fr. com + loqui to speak] conversation, dialogue; an academic meeting at
which specialist(s) speak on a given subject and then answer questions about it.