SPS and Physics News
- Flagstaff Science in the Park – TOMORROW!
- 10 AM – 2PM, at Wheeler Park, come support SPS and many other science vendors such as Gore and USGS
- Meteor Crater trip on October 3rd
- Anyone is invited!
- You can also join APS through the club!
- You get access to scholarships and specific job opportunities
- The department will pay for it, just fill out your information in the form at the start of every club, email us if you have any questions!
- Qiskit Fall Fest 2026 (October 24th-25th)
- Compete in a Quantum Hackathon against students from other Arizona schools
- All levels invited
- Meet other STEM students and learn strategies
- Contact [email protected] for more information
- Did you know an electron can store information?
- An electron rotates in a certain direction which can flip when a magnetic field is introduced, this flip causes a photon to be emitted. If you can keep this spin state you can store the data.
Ongoing Research On Campus
- Student Research Highlight: Savanna Restoration in South Africa by Rocco
- Collaborated with researchers at NAU, Marcey Olajos, to fund this study abroad trip to Africa
- Effects of land use change on biodiversity
- Used field samples, such as ectoparasites and rodent traps, to examine the ecology across Kruger Park
Demo Night: Ferrofluid
- A suspension is an unstable mixture where one component is solid enough to clump together and colloids are a specific type of suspension where the material is now in a state where it takes a while to clump together
- Examples include aerogel, shaving cream, and Jell-O
- Ferrofluids are a colloidal suspension where a ferro-magentic solid is suspended in a medium
- First invented in 1963 by Steve Papell at NASA used as liquid rocket fuel in microgravity environments
- Some practical uses for ferrofluids include speakers (by decreasing the amplitude of the frequency), cell phones, and computers.
- Colloid particles are small enough so that the coulomb forces are larger than them meaning that kinetic energy cannot overcome this so colligation is done through gravity!
- Ferrofluid exhibits spikes instead of a continuous surface, because the magnetic field is normal to the surface of the ferrofluid, causing this phenomenon titled “normal field instability”
- Check it out in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEvVcaEmjjo