Our physics majors go above and beyond in their work even outside of our traditional academic semesters. Over the next few weeks, we will highlight students who are participating in summer research, whether at HPU, another U.S. institution, or even abroad. For our first student profile in 2017, we recognize rising junior Erin Brady, who is participating in HPU’s third annual Summer Research Program in the Sciences (SuRPS). She is working under the guidance of Dr. Titus on the conservation of angular momentum apparatus developed by Alan Vasquez this past year in our PHY 4000 course. In the past few weeks, Erin has been testing the motors to understand how the duty cycle affects the resulting frequency of the motors, in order to form a calibration system, as well as measuring the moment of inertia and the torque due to friction. These measurements will aid in developing a lab for introductory physics classes and an advanced lab for upper-level students. She created a user interface in VPython so students can easily operate the apparatus through a Jupyter Notebook. In addition to developing a lab, they hope to enter the apparatus into the AAPT-ALPhA Award competition.
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