Regional Physics Group to Hold First Meeting at Colorado State

A free public lecture on astronomical phenomena that have influenced human history will be featured at a physics conference at Colorado State University.

The Four Corners section of the American Physical Society will hold a two-day conference Sept. 29-30 in the Engineering and Physics Building on the Colorado State campus. The Four Corners represents society members in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah and has invited Wyoming colleagues to attend.

The meeting, which will bring together professional physicists from industry, government and academia, is general in scope and will include invited and contributed papers from all fields.

Roger Culver, professor of physics at Colorado State, will discuss "Celestial Events that Changed History" at 8 p.m. Sept. 29 in the Idaho-Michigan-Oklahoma rooms at the University Park Holiday Inn, 425 W. Prospect Rd., Fort Collins.

Registration begins at 11 a.m. Sept. 29 in the physics department, Wing D of the new physics-engineering building.

Friday’s activities will consist of contributed papers, a general session featuring physics activities being conducted at universities in Wyoming and Colorado and Culver’s evening lecture. Saturday’s agenda will include more papers, a poster session, student awards and two general sessions on physics education and on new physics research results in each of the Four Corners states.

The Four Corners section, formed four years ago, is one of several sections of the American Society, according to Hans D. Hochheimer, professor of physics and an associate chair of the organizing committee. The national group has one annual meeting and its divisions and sections, including the Four Corners section, hold their own local, smaller meetings annually. Hochheimer said this provides benefits, especially for students.

"We have graduate students and even undergraduates deliver excellent presentations at these local meetings," Hochheimer said. "At the national meeting, with perhaps 6,000 people in attendance, it’s hard for students to be heard.

"We do this mainly for the graduate, and undergraduate, students, because it’s much more friendly among perhaps 150 presenters," he said.

Hochheimer has contacted area high school science teachers and has urged them to attend, since the American Association of Physics Teachers plays an important role in the Four Corners section meeting.

Hochheimer said that authorities from local schools and from the city of Fort Collins had provided support in arranging for the meeting, the first ever held at Colorado State.