After over forty years of existing only in theory, Dr. Takashi Imai and Dr. Mingxuan Fu have demonstrated the existence of the spin liquid state for the first time. Under super-cooled conditions near absolute zero and under high magnetic fields the electrons in the crystal studied refuse to transition into a frozen predictable pattern, but instead continue to try and resolve unmatched pairs. Their research has recently been published in Science.
The Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference took place this past weekend at Trent University and once again our undergraduates did an outstanding job presenting their research. A number of our students were singled out with awards for the best talks in their disciplines:
Quantum Condensed Matter: Aaron Goldberg (1st) Patrick Daley (3rd)
Astrophysics: Michael Radica (1st) Jasper Grond (3rd)
Engineering Physics, Applied Physics and Special Topics: Michael Walters (3rd)
Of special note, the soft matter / biophysics category was swept by McMaster!:
1st Christian DiMaria 2nd Jennifer Tang 3rd Katelyn Dixon 4th Chris Gubbels
In addition the CUPC organizers have just announced that the top poster prize went to McMaster’s own Claire Preston.
Sarah Symonsand co-author Elizabeth Tasker (former postdoc in P&A) are in the October 2015 issue of Scientific American with their article entitled "Stars of the Dead". (Rob Cockcroft, Planetarium Manager, former P&A postdoc and current MIIETL postdoc also is mentioned in the article.) The article outlines the recent discovery and cataloging of astrological/religious texts from ancient Egypt.
Congratulations to Jennifer Tang, who won the CAP Best Oral Presentation Competition last week in the Division of Medical and Biological Physics, and then came first again in the overall competition between division winners. The research for her presentation "The Formation of Alzheimer's Plaques in Synthetic Membranes", was performed in Dr. Rheinstadter's lab. Jennifer, an undergraduate who will soon enter the 4th year of the Honours Biophysics program, was competing for the most part against graduate students.
The Physics World website reported on Jennifer's work at
