Akron Physics Club

 
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Welcome to the Akron Physics Club WEB site.

Club programs deal with current issues in Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Cosmology, Biology and a host of other topics.  

This year promises to be an exiting time.  Several new speakers have been scheduled to present topics of current scientific interest.  




MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT: 
May 19, 2008



 (A WEEK EARLY THIS TIME!


Tangier, 532 West Market, 6:00 PM - Dinner at 6:30

     RESERVATIONS or regrets by Thursday, May 15th, to:

Reservations Secretary Charlie Wilson: cww3mmwilson@juno.com (330) 836-4167



     Our last meeting of the 2007-8 season features an intriguing (if little-understood) topic currently mentioned in the pages of scientific journals and even in weekly news magazines.  On March 19 [a week early this month] Dr. Daniel Akerib, Professor and Chair of Case Western University’s Physics Department (who is also a member of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search operating in the Soudan Mine in Northern Minnesota) will speak to us on      

 

 DARK MATTER

    

     As Dr. Akerib explains, “Overwhelming observational evidence indicates that most of the matter in the Universe consists of dark matter -- material unseen except for it's gravitational effects. One possibility is that the dark matter is Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) that were produced in the early Universe. These relics could be in the Milky Way and be detectable through scattering off of atomic nuclei in a terrestrial detector.  The detecting of WIMPs is a great experimental challenge because they interact at a low rate with small energy depositions, amidst much higher sources of background.”

     Dr. Akerib will introduce the dark matter problem and the WIMP hypothesis, and he will discuss a range of the different techniques that he and his colleagues use in their attempts to detect them. These approaches include pucks of germanium operated at 50mK, buckets of liquified xenon instrumented with light-sensitive photomultiplier tubes, and the resurgence of bubble chambers from the heyday of accelerator-based particle physics.

 

 

VISITORS ARE WELCOME, and STUDENTS' DINNERS ARE FREE!

  

 
(See Newsletter page For Details)

Please join us for this next meeting.  Pre-registration for dinner is required so that we can guarantee our reservations.  Dinner is $19.  To register, send an email to our Reservations Secretary - Charlie Wilson, at cww3mmwilson@juno.com  (or 330-836-4167)



 

Upcoming meetings:

September, 2008 Please watch this announcement area for news of upcoming meetings.



We would greatly appreciate your comments and suggestions on future WEB content.  What additional WEB pages and features would you like to see added to this site?  Please email your suggestions to John Kirszenberg at kirszenb@roadrunner.com


 

This WEB site is sponsored by 
The University of Akron


Meetings are at the  Tangier Restaurant, 532 West Market, Akron, Ohio