Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.
Jan 1st, 2011
Powdered doughnuts are good for you! At least, if you’re interested in solar power. Yes, even you can build your own solar cell using powdered doughnuts and tea leaves.
Jul 15th, 2009
As students of physics, we learn when studying Special Relativity that the speed of light is constant. When we study geometric optics, we learn that the speed of light slows down in a medium. This seeming contradiction leads to a completely understandable misconception about the nature of light.
Jul 9th, 2008
I realize I haven’t written an update on the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in a while. I had mentioned about a month ago that the STM was working; however, Donnie left for Old Dominion University via our 3/2 engineering program and I haven’t yet recruited a student to pick up the pieces. I’m working out [...]
Apr 19th, 2008
Donnie and I have finally managed to get a stable tunneling current with our STM. On Thursday we ran a couple of traces in the x-direction, and as long as we didn’t touch the table or the air handler wasn’t on we saw minimal historesis. Next week we will set everything up on stone block/foam [...]
Feb 27th, 2008
My student and I are still working hard on our scanning tunneling microscope. We’ve had some issues with the solder-less breadboard we were using to prototype. Stuff was shorting on the breadboard, so we placed the components on a proto-board and soldered them together. The pre-amp is now working exactly like it should. We supply [...]
Oct 15th, 2007
I am a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) guy. I completed my M.S. thesis using a commercial instrument and I have always wanted to build one. Until recently, I haven’t had the time or the money. About 1 month ago, a student here at Longwood University approached me about doing a project. The first thing that [...]
Aug 16th, 2006
Electromagnetic radiation (or light) sometimes behaves as a particle and sometimes it behaves as a wave. The same observations are made with regular particles like electrons. This apparent contradiction has led many to question the foundation of modern science, specifically quantum theory. How can something be A in one instance and be B in another? [...]