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  News and Notes from the April 3, 2008 SPS meeting

A group of six people are at "Physics with the Twins" right now, we'll hear
from them next week.

NEXT WEEK:  we will have a "Meeting with a Meal" on MONDAY at 5:00 pm.  It
was a lot of fun last time, let's do it again.  We will also have a shorter
'emergency' meeting on Thursday to do any last-minute prep for the Zone
meeting.

NEXT WEEK:  possible public observing session.  It would be nice if it
happened on Monday after our meeting.  Dr. Korenic will give a talk on "Toys
in Space" at 8:30, with the Observatory opening at 9:00, first clear night
of the week.

Chuck announced that ACM (the computer society) is going to have a
paint-ball day this Saturday, and we are welcome to join them.  If you are
interested, contact Chuck.  

Zone meeting preparation:  at this point we have students coming from five
other schools, and our total is over 50 people.  There is still room for
more, IF you sign up by Friday April 4.  For $5 you get three meals, if you
go to both Friday and Saturday.  The detailed schedule is now posted on the
web and in the seminar room.  If the weather is good Friday evening we will
go to the Observatory (thank you Dr. Vonk), if the weather is bad we will go
to the Planetarium (thank you Dr. Korenic).  Friday evening starting at 5:00
is registration, we'll have a table for selling SPS shirts and stuff.
Someone will need to help with that.  Also we decided to try to make some
money by taking infrared pictures of people with the new camera, paste into
a "Future Faces of Physics" frame and email it.  Chuck and Matt C.
volunteered to work on that.  Next Friday we'll bring the trebuchet over -
Joe, Kate, Aaron R. and Matt C. volunteered to coordinate that.

Not much news from the Pre-engineering Society.

Demos:  
Jay brought in a large thermoelectric fan.  Lacking a wood stove in the
seminar room, we set it on a hot-plate.  The thermal energy flowing from the
hot base to the cooling vanes passes through a Peltier junction that diverts
some energy into electrical energy to run the fan.  It worked very well!

We also did the demo of parallel currents attracting, anti-parallel currents
repelling.  Works well, lots of sparks when the jumper cables are connected.

Minutes taken by Matt Cady and Dr. B.


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