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  News and Notes from the November 20, 2007 SPS meeting


Shirts.  Order your shirts and sweatshirts by November 27th!  There is a
clipboard in the seminar room or an email version on the website.  The
designs have been sent to the printer, so we should be ready to go.


3M.  UWRF SPS has been mentioned in the 3M newsletter.  There is a copy
in the seminar room.


The Definition of Geek.  Thursday, November 29th we will be having guest
speaker engineer Christine Severns-Williams presenting a talk about the
definition of geek at 3pm.  The tentative location will be the seminar
room.


Bakken Museum.  Weather permitting, we could go visit the Bakken museum
after the talk November 29th (and yes, after 101 lab).  Maybe leave 5 or
5:30?


Rockets.  41 teams launched rockets, and there were no casualties.  Most
of the rockets flew very well.  We took in about $430 in entry fees and
only spent about $290, so we have a good chunk left for prize money. 
Chuck and Dr. B are working on getting the altitude data so we can decide
all of our winners.  Some suggestions for such competitions at another
time were:  to not use kits, to use colors that can be easily seen against
the sky for paint, and bigger engines.


Research Presentation.  There is an opportunity to give oral or poster
presentations on projects at an APS convention in March (Lee?).  It will
be held in New Orleans, and in order to do this, send in your abstract to
sps@aig.org by November 25th.  Be sure to include your name, if it will be
an oral or poster presentation, mailing address, email address, and your
social security number (tax purposes).  There is a $200 travel stipend. 
For more info either contact Dr. B or you can contact:

SPS
One Physics Eclipse
College Park, MD 20740
Telephone: (301) 209-3007
Fax: (301) 209-0839
sps@aig.org


Christmas Cards for wounded veterans.  There is a bit of security measures
we would have to find out and abide by.  Is there still interest?  (Yes.)


Pre-engineering society didn't meet today.


Demo.  Dr. B brought out the angular momentum wheel and platform and let
sps members try it out.  Watch out for those flying classical mechanics
books!

Minutes taken by Jen


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