Dear Physics Community,

CORRECTION: the previous version of the Weekly Message congratulated Laura Cui for winning the Goldwater Scholarship.  This was incorrect and my fault – Laure has been nominated by MIT for the Goldwater Scholarship.  I apologize for any embarrassment my mistake caused.

Good luck to everyone for finals week, the last hurdle before a well-earned break.  Somehow, this term seemed more difficult than the last.

Congratulations and thanks to Ed Bertschinger, Michelle Tomasik, Byron Drury, and Christina Andujar and all the mentors in the Mentoring Program for finishing the semester.  Physics provided around 80 mentors to over 300 students in our early subjects.

Peter

Announcements

• School of Science Quality of Life Awards, deadline Jan. 14 here
• Alumni Class Funds Call for Proposals, deadline January 28 here
• Call for nominations for the Springer Thesis Awards here and here
• APS Advancing Graduate Leadership here

Physics

Dear Physics Community,

I think everyone looks forward to the end of the term — much has happened, and most of you and I need a break.

Today we had an 8 am zoom meeting; slides are here.   Iain asked that our instructors ensure they have plans in place in case students in their subject test positive.  Physics instructors did this at the start of term, and I’m asking that instructors remind their students just now.  We also heard about different scenario planning and that MIT does not plan any additional restrictions.  Indeed, the discussion centered on relaxing the current restrictions during Spring.  Stay tuned.

I learned from Peter Dourmashkin that our technical instructor Caleb Bonyun maintains a viral site with Physics demos. For example,

@tasteslikechaos

Let’s start the week off with some physics! #MIT #MITPhysics #physicsfun #science #physics #planets #physicstok #sciencetok

♬ original sound – PhysicsIsFun

Thanks for this to Caleb for showing off his group’s work.

Peter

Announcements

• DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship here
• Air Force Research Lab Scholars Program Summer 2022 Internships – Application Now Open! application webinar

Physics

• TESS discovers a planet the size of Mars but with the makeup of Mercury from George Ricker, Roland Venderspek, and Sara Seager here

• A Massachusetts company leads as the race for fusion energy heats up, led by MIT NSE here.

• Electrons for neutrinos from Or Hen, here
• Quanta Magazine article on quantum simulation with Valdan Vuletic here