Physics students participate in local poster session

The undergraduate students in Prof. Tom Ferguson's Matter and Interactions 1 course had a poster session on the last day of classes in the fall 2014 semester in which they presented the results of their physics simulation projects. The students in the freshman honors course were divided up into teams of two, and each team thought up a physics process that they could simulate using the VPython programming language, which they had learned during the semester. The projects spanned a large range of topics including simulating the speed of sound waves through a container of gas particles, the motion of a soccer ball during a curving "banana kick", and the effect of Jupiter's atmosphere on a spaceship getting a gravitational boost. The students made posters showing and explaining their results, and the entire Physics Department was invited to view the posters and ask the students questions. The 7300 corridor of Wean Hall was full of faculty members and physics majors interested to see the results of the students' projects and to ask them questions.