Third-year physics majors Codie Fiedler Kawaguchi and Hayley Johnson had the opportunity to highlighting their research accomplishments from the summer of 2016 at the annual American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics meeting in San Jose, CA in November. The students traveled with their research advisor, Prof. David Schaffner, to the conference and presented their work in the undergraduate section poster session on Tuesday, November 1, 2016.
Codie's work focused on data taken at the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment at Swarthmore College as part of a collaborative project between Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore that looks at accelerating magnetized plasma structures using a current pulsed copper ring. Codie studied the change in velocity of these structures due to different boundary conditions. Hayley's work was also connected to the joint project. She looked at the effect of metal proximity with respect to the amount of magnetic field produced by the pulsed coil. Hayley and Codie attended the first two days of the conference where they were able to see a wide variety of talks on topics ranging from fusion to astrophysical plasma, as well as interact with a number of other students and researchers in the community.
See their abstracts here:
Hayley: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP16/Session/JP10.29
Codie: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP16/Session/JP10.28