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Brown wins undergraduate research award

Brown-wins-undergraduate-research-award

Elisa Lopez | Phoenix Staff

In print | April 24, 2008

Phoenix Reporter Matt Bleiman ’11 recently sat down with Professor of Physics Michael Brown to talk about his recent award from the American Physical Society — the 2008 Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution. According to the APS, the award was given to him, “for his outstanding contributions to plasma physics made possible by his development of a world-class spheromak laboratory at Swarthmore College, and for his energetic mentoring of undergraduate students.”

Matt Bleiman: You recently won the American Physical Society’s 2008 Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution. What kind of research did you do to win this prize?

Michael Brown: The research I do is generally called plasma physics — the physics of hot ionized gases — and what I tell folks is that I have two intellectual streams or ideas that I pursue. One is funded by the Department of Energy, and that is to do ideas in magnetic confinement fusion, to try to make the gas very very hot and confined and dense so that maybe it could be a fusion reactor. The second stream has to do with more basic physics ideas and that is supported by the National Science Foundation. That is to study laboratory astrophysics and the idea is to create conditions in the laboratory that are similar to what is found in an astrophysical environment, say near the surface of the sun or maybe near a black hole.

Matt Bleiman: What is the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX)?

Michael Brown: Well, spheromak is the word that scientists have for this spherical, magnetized ball of plasma. So we make two spheromaks, kind of like a ring with a magnetic field that goes the long way around as well as the short way around and makes a spherical packet. We make two of these packets and smash them together to simulate processes that might happen on the surface of the sun.

Matt Bleiman: What kind of equipment do you use for the experiments?

Michael Brown: The machine has several components. The main components are two plasma guns on the end of the machine that make these plasma rings, spheromaks. The way we are able to get these intense conditions is that we use very high voltages and high energies. The power supplies operate at 10,000 volts and 100,000 amps so that is a gigawatt of power for a short time. So we put a gigawatt of power into each spheromak and drive them together so we can get temperatures that are astrophysical — a million degrees or so — for a short time. The densities and the magnetic field strengths are also what you would find on the surface of the sun.

Matt Bleiman: How did you get into plasma physics?

Michael Brown: Well that was the other intellectual idea when I was in high school and even college. I was interested in fusion energy as a means to save the world and address the world’s energy needs. The idea of fusion energy is that it is the process that runs the sun and the stars and if we can figure out how to do that on earth it would save the world.

Matt Bleiman: You won your award for “research at an undergraduate institution.” Do you think it is harder to do research at a smaller school like Swarthmore?

Michael Brown: I guess so. I think Swarthmore is unique among small colleges in the support that we get for doing our scholarship and our research. We have our own laboratories and there is a research ethic at the college that the students are interested and enthusiastic about helping with research. There is also a great leave policy that the administration has so we can take a year off every four so we can take some time off every four years for sabbatical. So that said, I think it has been a really unique experience being at Swarthmore. It is true that we do not have graduate students and we have a higher teaching load than a professor at a research university would have, but that is why I’m here. The progress goes more slowly but I hope that it is of the same quality that a professor would have at Stanford or Harvard.

Matt Bleiman: So then how do you get students involved with your research?

Michael Brown: That is really the key and that is really the main thing I want to say. It really would not have happened without the help of Swarthmore undergraduates. In particular there have been sixteen honors senior thesis projects on the machine so that is sixteen students that focused enough time to write a thesis and go through the external examination process.

In addition to those students there were another twenty or so that helped out in various ways but not in the honors program, say in their freshman or sophomore year. I have also taught a plasma class a couple of times so I have had a lot of good interaction with students. That is the key for this award and that is really what the prize is about is working with undergraduates and it could not have happened without them.

Matt Bleiman: What are you going to do with the stipend for the award?

Michael Brown: There are two pieces to the award. $5,000 goes to the physics departmental fund so that will fund student stipends and travel funds for students. $5,000 also went to me and I will probably use that for traveling to meetings that I would normally not go to or other kinds of academic things.

Matt Bleiman: Do you have any plans for the future of the SSX?

Michael Brown: Well we have a grant cycle so every three years I have to come up with new ideas and we are right in the middle of a grant cycle. So actually the machine is in a very different form than it was for much of the work that was done for the award. Fundamentally we will be doing the same kinds of things using these interesting spheromak loops to study plasma physics and looking at them by themselves or merging them together, but we will be doing the same kind of high energy, high temperature, short pulse plasma physics work.

A new thing that we are just beginning is computer modeling and that is something that I am not an expert in at all but I am starting to get some contacts from computer scientists that are experts in modeling these kind of phenomena. No one here does this exact thing but I am looking at collaborations at other universities to do that and that would certainly involve students here.