|
|
Contact: Bruce Conley
Associate Director of College Relations
Phone: (605) 274-5526
Fax: (605) 274-4903
www.augie.edu
April 10, 2007
SIOUX FALLS – For the second year in a row, work done by Augustana students in the area of atomic, molecular, and optical physics has been selected for an invited talk at the annual meeting of the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics of the American Physical Society (DAMOP).
Augustana students Laura Doshier (Rapid City, SD) and Amy Lueking (Sioux Falls) are part of a collaboration of undergraduate students at Augustana and Kansas State University that have been studying the dissociation of small polyatomic molecules. The collaboration has been selected to give one of five invited talks in the session devoted to undergraduate research.
Eli Parke, a senior at Kansas State University, will deliver the talk on behalf of the collaboration. It is entitled Isotopic effects in bond rearrangement caused by sudden ionization of ammonia and methane molecules. Other schools represented in the invited session will be Denison University, St. Olaf College, Union College, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Augustana is the only school to be represented in both 2006 and 2007. Jamie Kapplinger (Spring Valley, MN) delivered an invited talk at the DAMOP 2006 meeting.
Doshier, Lueking, and Parke are also co-authors, along with Augustana’s Kai Kam (Ivan) Lee, of the related contributed paper Geometric and Isotopic Influences on the Fragmentation Patterns of Rapidly Ionized Methane and Ammonia. Doshier is a senior economics major, Lueking a senior physics major, and Lee a junior mathematics and physics major from Hong Kong.
The annual DAMOP meeting is being held jointly with the Division of Atomic & Molecular Physics and Photonic Interactions of the Canadian Association of Physicists in Calgary, Alberta, June 5-9, 2007. In addition to the talk given by Parke, the meeting will feature presentations by 2005 Nobel Laureates Theodor Hänsh and Roy Glauber.
DAMOP was founded in 1943 and was the first division of the American Physical Society. Its central focus is fundamental research on atoms, simple molecules, electrons and light, and their interactions. It plans an enabling role underlying many areas of science through the development of methods for the control and manipulation of atoms, molecules, charged particles and light, through precision measurements and calculations of their properties, and through the invention of new ways to generate light with specific properties. The annual DAMOP meeting is the largest national gathering of the atomic, molecular, and optical physics community and attracts a considerable number of international scientists as well.
The work was supported by a Research Corporation Cottrell College Science Award and by the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy.