Department News
2015
Cal Poly Receives National Award for Efforts to Increase Number of Physics Teachers in U.S. High Schools
Cal Poly is among 11 universities in the nation honored for helping to reduce the critical shortage of physics teachers in U.S. high schools. The Physics Teacher Education Coalition's 5+ Club awards recognized the university and other institutions that had at least five physics teacher graduates in the 2013/14 academic year.
2014
NSF Grant Will Send Cal Poly Students to International Research Collaboration
Cal Poly Physics Professor Tom Gutierrez has received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for undergraduate research. The $186,000 grant allows several students to participate in the international research collaboration called the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy.
Read more about the NSF and IRC opportunity.
Physics Professor Discovers Two New Planets
To find a planet, you first have to find a star that wobbles. Then you spend a lot of time — in David Mitchell's case, 14 years — observing the star to prove its movement results from the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.
Read more about Mitchell's discovery
Physics Professor Honored by American Physical Society
Election as a fellow of the American Physical Society is one of the highest honors a physicist's professional peers can confer. Only three Cal Poly faculty members have received this accolade, and Randy Knight, elected in 2013, is the third.
Read more about Professor Knight and his award
NSF Video Features Cal Poly Citizen Scientist Astronomy Study
The National Science Foundation website Science Nation has posted a video featuring the RECON project led by Cal Poly Physics Professor John Keller and astronomer Marc Buie from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. The Research and Education Cooperative Occultation Network (RECON) project provides telescope equipment and training to citizen scientists in 14 small, western U.S. communities north and south of Reno, Nev., where night skies are clear and dark. The network brings together students, teachers, and knowledgeable amateur astronomers from each community to determine the sizes of Kuiper belt objects — large, frozen bodies that orbit the sun beyond Neptune. The sizes of the Kuiper belt objects will help determine other characteristics, such as their density and composition.
Thus far, the project involves over 50 community members and 20 teachers and their students from 15 communities in California and Nevada. The astronomers hope to extend the network to include 40 communities stretching from southern Arizona to Washington state.
See the video and accompanying article on Science Nation