WVWC Physics Dept

04/28/2023

Our graduating seniors just after defending their research projects (except for Abby who had a softball game).

Rebekah is off to Wake Forest for biomedical engineering. Anthony is headed to Marshall for mechanical engineering. Jackson will be attending WVU for materials science & engineering along with Payton doing aerospace engineering. Madisyn will be working for the US Army DEVCOM Soldier Center as a physical scientist in the Protection Systems Division. Oliver will also be entering the workforce for Amazon web services as an engineering operation technician.

04/27/2023

Our RockSat-X payload was successfully integrated into the main WV payload last Saturday. Our circuit board is the one on the far left with the green and red LEDs lit up. It contains an Arduino Pro Micro, an IMU, an OpenLog/SD card, and the motor controller/H-bridge. Our two motors - one fast, one slow - are at the top right near the blue meter and the edge of the table. We also have a Raspberry Pi inside the plastic/white box at top center and a Picamera. We have programmed the motors to spin at the same rate as the rocket, but in the opposite direction. We will use the Picamera to watch the motors spin to ensure they do what they should during the flight.

The vibration test at Wallops is in June and then in August, we fly on a NASA rocket out of Wallops. The rocket will get about 150 km up and then fall back into the Atlantic ocean where it will be retrieved and then we will get our flight data and onboard video.

04/11/2023

Our seniors are nearing the end of their research projects -- Abby is trying to fly a helicopter in a low pressure atmosphere, Anthony is creating an argon plasma, Jackson has taught his robot hand to hold a straw, Oliver is studying heat transfer in parabolic ceramic nose cones, Payton is measuring the aerodynamics of her carbon fiber wing, Rebekah is using radioactivity to kill cancer cells, and Santiago is creating an artificial planetary magnetic field using a Tesla coil. Madisyn (not pictured) is testing different materials for bullet proof vests -- we'll hunt her down for a picture later.

03/24/2023

Tonight we celebrate the 6 students inducted into Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Physics Honor Society. Congratulations to Robert Hardt, Anthony McIntosh, Jackson Igo, Abigail O'Shields, Payton Hefner, and Rebekah Sikora.

03/09/2023

The Wesleyan Summer Gifted Program will run from Sun Jun 18 to Sat Jul 1, 2023. We have had a number of early registrations and we are on track for a full contingent of 40 kids this year.

02/24/2023

The West Virginia Regional Junior Science and Humanities Symposium was held on Fri-Sat Feb 17-18, 2023. Eight high school contestants vied for scholarship money and the opportunity to present their research at the National Level. Jeeya Patel from Charleston won the competition with a project about the deletion of a dot-1.1 protein in C. elegans. Grace Yan from Morgantown came in 2nd with a machine learning project about bus route redistribution to save transportation money for school districts. Lauren Shen, also from Morgantown, came in 3rd with a project that used machine learning to explore cerebral microvascular disease.

02/12/2023

Alumnus report: Nate Chalmers (2021) is pursuing a PhD in Physics at Cornell University. He reports, “I am studying the plasma produced by a hybrid X-pinch, which is produced using two or more fine metal wires arranged so that they cross and touch at a single point in the form of an X, to act as the load of a pulsed power generator."

03/20/2021

02/27/2021