Meet the 2011 SPS Interns
From working on Capitol Hill to preparing science kits for middle school students, the 10 SPS summer interns are off to a productive start! They completed orientation and met their mentors at the home of SPS National, the American Center for Physics, on Tuesday, May 31 (with a lunch-time Q&A with Nobel Laureate John C. Mather to boot!). To see their introductions, journals, and photos, visit the 2011 Intern Page.

Intros & Journals | Photo Gallery |About the Program | Previous Interns

First Call for Annual Chapter Reports
SPS Chapters should consider this report as the prime opportunity to showcase the activities of their chapter, and by doing so, they become eligible for an SPS Outstanding Chapter Award! So please take the time to tell us all about SPS (and Sigma Pi Sigma) at your school. Your chapter activities may be featured in one of the SPS publications, or here on the SPS website.

Chapter Report Procedures | Outstanding Chapter Awards

Gary White received as APS fellow
During the APS April Meeting in Anaheim, CA, SPS Director Gary White (2nd from right) received the honor of being named 2011 APS fellow. The APS Forum on Education nominated White "for inspired leadership of the Society of Physics Students, including successful efforts to facilitate the increased participation of undergraduate students in local and national activities." Congratulations, Gary!

Full story in AIP Matters newsletter

2011 Undergraduate Research Awards
Eight SPS chapters have received Sigma Pi Sigma Undergraduate Research Awards to fund chapter research projects, including the University of Southern Mississippi (pictured at left). The awards provide calendar year grants to support local chapter activities that are deemed imaginative and likely to contribute to the strengthening of the SPS program.

Recipient Photos & Abstracts | Award Details

SPS and ΣΠΣ Launch Job Site
The Society of Physics Students (SPS) and Sigma Pi Sigma (ΣΠΣ), the physics honor society, recently launched SPS Jobs, a new resource for both job seekers and employers focused on science and technology jobs. SPS Jobs is part of the Physics Today Career Network.

Go to SPS Jobs

Online SPS Poster Galleries
This is SPS's first experiment with virtual poster galleries—a collection of student posters from SPS sessions at the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Winter Meeting, and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) 217th Meeting. Please let us know if you have any feedback, or feedback from anyone with whom you share the links. Feel free to share them with your friends, family, colleagues, advisors, or place them on your facebook wall.

See the SPS Posters | APPT Winter Meeting | AAS 217th Meeting

LaserFest 2010 & FiOs/LS XXVI/IPF
Frontiers in Optics 2010/Laser Science XXVI and the 2010 Industrial Physics Forum all had added 'umph' as they coincided with the year-long LaserFest celebration. Read the accounts of two SPS reporters who attended this smörgåsbord of a conference, which includes some good advice to undergraduate students: Get out and attend events like this, you never know who you will meet and what opportunities will arise.

LaserFest 2010 – Avoid Exposure to Beam
By Christopher Maloney, Roberts Wesleyan College & Rochester Inst. Technology

Action, Camera, Light!
By Josh Geller, University of Rochester

Lasers and Social Media are Hot in Portland
Cool summer weather in Portland, OR, was a welcome relief from soaring summer temperatures on the East Coast for SPS national office staff and several SPS Interns, Shane Allison, Linda Henneberg, Jasdeep Maggo, and Foha Rafiq, who attended the AAPT Summer Meeting, July 17-21. So what was hot in Portland?

SPS Intern Shane Allison: Intriguing Sessions at AAPT

SPS Intern Foha Rafiq: A Glimpse into the World of Physics Teachers

Does That Involve Acoustics?
By John Boyle, Brigham Young University
Acoustics is HUGE and endlessly interesting. I enjoyed this conference because of the inherent interdisciplinary nature of every presentation and field of research. On paper, relatively few attendees could claim the title Acoustician or Professor of Acoustics. Musicians, surgeons, micro-biologists, marine biologists, geologists, linguists, engineers, federal crash investigators, shipbuilders, audiologists, you name it, they were at the conference.

The 2009 AGU Fall Meeting
By Michael Towle, University of Memphis
Before I attended the Fall 2009 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), my professors and fellow graduate students who had attended AGU in previous years gushed about how big it was. Sure, the official website stated that over 16,000 geophysicists would present their research. My mind has trouble processing and visualizing large numbers on a sheet of paper, so I thought, “How big could this rodeo actually get?” Upon arriving at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, I immediately discovered that AGU was incomprehensibly epic in scale.

Putting a New Face on Physics
By Krystle Williams, 2007-08 SPS National Council
"What will the physics community look like 10 years from now? What should it look like? With the adoption of the theme “Future Faces of Physics,” these are the questions the Society of Physics Students (SPS) is encouraging you to ask yourself."

SPS Council member Krystle Williams brings SPS's 2008 theme Future Faces of Physics to Symmetry readers. Symmetry is a magazine about particle physics and its connections to other aspects of life and science, from interdisciplinary collaborations to policy to culture. It is published by Fermilab and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Read Krystle's article in Symmetry | SPS Future Faces of Physics Initiative

Future Faces of Physics Jeopardy
With the theme Future Faces of Physics, (FFP) SPS is raising visibility and focus on issues of student diversity in physics. Future Faces of Physics Jeopardy is centered on this theme...try it out with friends or at your next SPS meeting!

If you would like to request a free FFP meeting kit that includes the Jeopardy game, please contact SPS. You can also compile your own kit.

Play FFP Jeopardy | FFP Meeting Kit

The first man-made nuclear explosion
By L. Worth Seagondollar, Co-Founder of SPS and Professor Emeritus, North Carolina State University
This talk describes one of the greatest war-time experiences possible for a young graduate student in the 1940's, including an eye-witness account of the Trinity Test in the New Mexico desert. Near-catastrophic accidents, working with armed guards watching, Enrico Fermi asking you to come to his office—these are unforgettable adventures.

Full Transcript | Video Highlights

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