Past Honors Projects

Students pursuing honors are expected to take MATH 1800 Multivariate Calculus (or placement above MATH 1800), PHYS 1130 Introductory Physics I (or placement above PHYS 1130), PHYS 1140 Introductory Physics II, PHYS 2130 Electric Fields and Circuits, PHYS 2140 Quantum Physics and Relativity, PHYS 2150 Statistical Physics, PHYS 3000 Methods of Theoretical Physics, PHYS 4050 and four additional courses above PHYS 1140, three of which must be above PHYS 3000 and one of which can be the second semester of honors, PHYS 4051.

Past Honors Projects 

Maria Perez Mendoza, '21, "Critical Phenomena in the Gravitational Collapse of Electromagnetic Dipole and Quadrupole Waves"

Chloe Richards, 21', "Accretion onto Endoparasitic Black Holes at the Center of a Neutron Star"

David Zhou, 21', "Cosmological Gravitational Waves: Refining a General Rule of Thumb for Reheating"

August Miller, '16, "Bondi Accretion in Trumpet Geometries"

Davis Unruh, '16, "Phonon Mode Conversion at Twist-Bonded Interfaces"

Jacob Forsyth, '15, "East-West Gradients in Atmospheric Potential Oxygen Across the Equatorial Pacific: Observations and Models"

Soichi Hirokawa, '14, "Yes, Photovoltaics are Effective in Maine: Measuring Power Production Along the Coast"

Daniel Palken, '14, "Modeling Phonons in Physical Detectors"

Alexander Edison, '13, "Group-theory constraints on color-ordered amplitudes in non-abelian gauge theories" 

Melissa Haskell, '13, "Localization of an OFDI tethered capsule for unsedated gastrointestinal 3D imaging"

William Page, '13, "Computational Modeling of Phonons at Crystal Interfaces:  An Application to the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search"

William Scott Perry, '13, "A Method for the Numerical Calculation of Surface Acoustic Waves on Piezoelectrically Active Crystals"

Helen White, '13, "Gravity Darkening and Brightening in Binary Stars"

Michelle Burns, '12, "Design, Construction and Calibration of a System to Precisely Measure Mechanical Properties of Mutable Collagenous Tissue and Connecting to Models of Viscoelastic Materials"

Noah Kent, '12, "Experimentally Observing the Onset of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect as a Function of Temperature"

Michael Mitchell, '11, "Computer Modeling of Surface Acoustic Waves on Water Loaded Surfaces"

Alexa Staley, '11, "The Oppenheimer-Snyder Dust Cloud Collapse in Moving-Puncture Coordinates"

John Wendell, '11, "Modeling the Evolution of a Schwarzchild Black Hole in Five Spacetime Dimensions"

Michael Eldridge, '10, "Maximal Slices of Slowly Rotating Black Holes"

Jason Immerman, '10, "A Novel Approach to Constructing Black Hole Puncture Initial Data"

Matthew Kwan, '10, "Observing Surface Acoustic Waves in Crystals"

Morgan MacLeod '09, "The Merger of White Dwarf-neutron Star Binaries"

Andrew DeBenedictus '08, "Superstring Tension in the Presence of an Orientfold Plane"

Keith Matera '08, "Shells around Black Holes:  The Effect of Freely-specifiable Variables on the Constraint Equations of General Relativity"

Benjamin Ripman '07, "Level-Rank Duality of twisted D-branes of the Sô(2n)_2kWess-Zumino-Witten Model"

Eric Sofen '07, "A Study of Gases in Arctic and Antarctic Firn"

Ian Alexander Morrison '05 , "Black Hole - Neutron Star Binaries in General Relativity: Effects of Black Hole Rotation"

Riccardo Schmid '05 , "Phonon Propagation in GaN"

Jonelle Walsh '05 , "A Chandra Study of Abell 85"

William Lathrop Klemm '04 , "A Matrix Model Approach to the Calculation of Wilson Loops in SU(2) Gauge Theory"

Aaron Lee Donohoe '03 , "Biases in Inferred Inter-annual Variability of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide due to Selective Sampling of Transport Models"

George Taylor Hubbard, Jr. '03 , "Inferring Temperature Records from Phenology Data by means of Time Series Analysis"

Andrew Morris Knapp '03 , "The Quasi-Equilibrium Approximation for Binary Inspiral: Analytical and Numerical Model Calculations in Scalar Gravity"

Monica Lynn Skoge '03 , "Numerical Models of Black Hole-Neutron Star Binaries"

Nicholas David Lyford '02 , "The Effect of Differential Rotation on the Maximum Mass of Rotating Neutron Stars"

John Karl Thorndike '02 , "The Calculation of Wilson Loops Using the Abelian and Non-Abelian Stokes's Theorems"

Brian N. Mohr '01 , "Bolometric Phonon Detectors"

Patrick R. Thompson '01 , "AC Resistance and Thermal Relaxation Times in Nickel Wires"

Sean N. Raymond '99 , "Investigations of the Cosmological Constant"

Lauren G. Bernheim '98 , "Structural Analysis of a Rotating Spherical Truss"

Matthew M. Engler '98 , "Angular Correlation of Gamma Rays from the Nucleus 178Hf"

Jennifer Frese '98 , "Tidally Driven Internal Solitary Waves over Georges Bank"

Ellen O'Shaughnessy '98 , "Applying physical models to explore the mechanical behavior of mutable collagenous tissues"

John R. Pavan '98 , "Trajectories of Dilatons and Axions in a Brans-Dicke Background"

Tim Aron '96 , "Monte Carlo Modeling of Phonon Imaging Experiments"

Paul Lewis '96 , "Phonon Imaging Experiments"

Dave Stegman '96 , "An Investigation of Anomalously Low Backscatter from Certain Geometries of the Sea Floor"

Jonathan Dugan '95 , "Frequency Dependent Critical Field Properties of Superconducting Indium in a Restricted Geometry"

Shion Kono '95 , "Stability of Electroweak Strings with Fermions"

Masatoshi Hirono '94 , "Orbits in Celestial Mechanics"

Jason T. Breitweg '94 , "Angular Correlations of Scattered Annihilation Radiation from Positronium"

David Gatchell '93 , "Measurement of Multiple Mixing Ratios [(E2/M1) in the Determination of (gK-gR)/Qo] for the K[pi]=8-Rotational Band in Hf178m2"

Kevin Slep '93 , "An Investigation of Quasi one-dimensional Gallium Arsenide Circuits through the Analysis of an Optical analog"

MacKenzie Stetzer '93 , "A Determination of the Emissivity of Nickel Wire as a Function of Temperature"

Zema Chowdhuri '93 , "On the Magnetic Hysteresis of the Supercoductor NbTi"