Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Tallahassee Scientific Society program

"Horizons 2012"

All presentations will be given at 7 pm (doors open at 6) in the IMAX Theater at the Challenger Learning Center on Kleman Plaza in downtown Tallahassee. There is an admission charge to cover the cost of renting the facility. The price of a single program is $12 ($6 for TSS members), while the price for the entire series is $40 ($20 for TSS members). Details are on the TSS web site. There is a $10 cost for a student membership in TSS.

Feb 23:
"The state of the Space Industry in Florida"
by Frank DiBello, President of Space Florida

March 22:
"Run Silent, Run Deep: New life on WWII shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico", by Thomas Shirley, marine biologist at Texas A&M

April 25:
"My Life as a Turkey: One man's study of nature and nurture in the wilds of Sopchoppy, FL" by Joe Hutto.

I have heard Joe talk about his experiences as the parent of a brood of wild turkeys that he raised from eggs and taught to forage and roost in the wild. (This was featured in a PBS/BBC Nature program last fall.) It is an amazing story.

May 24:
"The ecology of a southern nature writer"
by Janisse Ray, author of The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood,
who grew up and still lives in Baxter, GA.

Update about Mag Lab "tour"

Folks at the mag lab have confirmed that they will be doing the triple-point of water demo this year, so that (in the low temperature lab) will be my first stop, followed by the tesla coil across the hall, in case anyone gets there late and wants to catch up with us.

From there I plan to go to the "shrinking quarter" demo, which will be done every half hour. The best deal is to get there right around when he fires the capacitor so we can get up front when the crowd leaves and spend the wait looking at all of the pieces needed to get a 60 Tesla magnetic field for a few micro seconds.

Lots and lots of details about this LRC pulse are in an old 2008 blog article linked HERE.

My route after that is unpredictable, but will include the magnet winding lab and the machine shop, and probably the big NMR magnet and the electron microscope, before heading over to the CAPS facility on Levy.

TAEVA, the Tallahassee Area Electric Vehicle Association, will have home-built and commercial electric vehicles on display in front of the CAPS building.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Plan for the Mag Lab Open House

Saturday, February 18

As in the past, I plan to be at the Mag Lab Open House (link to announcement) to lead an informal tour of specific parts of the lab. I will go to areas of particular interest to students taking PHY2049, but others are welcome.

My usual plan is to start at the Mag Lab itself at 10:00 sharp and finish in the CAPS engineering labs in the afternoon, so I recommend parking in the large lot behind CAPS (off Levy, to the east of the Mag Lab) so you won't have far to walk at the end of the day.

A map and details from past years are in a blog entry from 2009. They did not do "crush a coin" or demo the triple point of water in 2011, so I hope those are back this year. If so, they will be our first stops.