"Simple Black Hole Formation Model" Lincoln E. Bragg lbragg@comcast.net
The first level of black hole formation ideas is just physical and is suitable for anyone you can mention the idea of black holes to. More depth is suitable if they are comfortable with (x,t) history diagrams of light ray paths. Later level is suitable if you have introduced the Schwarzschild black hole model and they know about changing coordinate systems in a plane.

"Escape Speeds and Asteroid Collisions" Carl E. Mungan, Physics Dept, U.S. Naval Academy mungan@usna.edu
Simultaneous conservation of momentum and energy determines the relative speed of a pair of gravitationally attracting bodies as a function of the distance separating them. This has applications such as solar-system satellite escape and asteroid-earth collisions. It is not necessary to start from an infinite-earth-mass approximation. Careful choice of reference frames eases the calculations.

"Bottle Rockets, Teacups and the Real World: A senior seminar to bridge the gap between physics student and life after college" William T. Franz, Randolph-Macon College wfranz@rmc.edu
One of the peculiar aspects to being a professional physicist is the authority we all seem to have to comment on 'real life' phenomena. I have been asked about everything from divining rods to space junk during my career. The senior seminar at Randolph-Macon College is designed to be a culminating experience that asks students to synthesize their course and research experience and improve their presentation skills. The most recent iteration focused on problems that varied from urban legends to wacky theories with an emphasis on laboratory measurement, practical calculation, and presentation of results. Methods for heating water to make tea, the practicality of launching people with bottle rockets, and the use of aluminum helmets to prevent brainwashing will be discussed.

"From 20 cm - 1µm: Measuring the Gas and Dust in Nearby Massive Low Surface Brightness Galaxies" Eric Kearsley (NRAO, Green Bank, WV; A. Einstein HS, Kensington, MD), K. O'Neil (NRAO, Green Bank, WV) ekearsley@verizon.net
Archival data from the IRAS, 2MASS, NVSS, and FIRST catalogs, supplemented with new measurements of HI, are used to analyze the relationship between the relative mass of the various components of galaxies (stars, atomic hydrogen, dust, and molecular gas) using a small sample of nearby (z<0.1), massive low surface brightness galaxies. The sample is compared to three sets of published data: a large collection of radio sources (Condon, 2002) from the UGC having a radio continuum intensity >2.5 mJy; a smaller sample of low surface brightness galaxies (Galaz, 2002); and a collection of NIR LSB galaxies (Monnier-Ragaigne 2002). We find that if we naively assume the ratio of the dust and molecular gas mass relative to the mass of HI is a constant we are unable to predict the observed ratio of stellar mass to HI mass, indicating that the HI mass ratio is a poor indicator of the total baryonic mass in the studied galaxies. HI measurements obtained during this study using the Green Bank Telescope also provide a correction to the velocity of UGC 11068.

"Physics in the Courtroom" David Wright, Tidewater Community College, Virginia Beach, VA tcwrigd@tcc.edu
Two very different cases, a car accident and a spotlighted helicopter, will be used to illustrate how physics can be used in the courtroom. The cases will be presented to the audience for consideration. Will their judgment match that of the judge?

"Roundtable discussion of issues in teaching introductory physics" , Deonna Woolard, Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, VA dwoolard@rmc.edu
We have been conducting the Force Concept Inventory Pre and Post tests for the last six years. Preliminary analysis of the data shows a downward trend of pretest scores. Might this be attributed to more students going to college and taking intro physics, for example, as compared to years past were the college environment was geared towards a certain type of student? I would like to know others opinion on this and the actions that they are taking to address the situation.

"Undergraduate Experiments in Nanolithography" David M. Schaefer, (dschaefer@towson.edu ), Cameron Bolling (cbolling@towson.edu ) John Sunderland (jsunderland@towson.edu ), Rajeswari Kolagani (rrajeswari@towson.edu ), Department of Physics, Astronomy and Geosciences, Towson University
Tyler Bradley, (tbradley@bcps.edu) Towson High School, Towson Md. 21252
Bonnie Ludka, (ludkabc@jmu.edu) James Madison University, Physics Department
The continued miniaturization of devices and components has produced an urgent need for fabrication techniques on a nanometer length scale. Nanolithography using the atomic force microscope (AFM) is emerging as a promising tool for nanotechnology . In this presentation, we discuss experiments using the AFM to perform nanolithography in an undergraduate laboratory. We report our results of AFM- induced nanoscale surface modifications in thin films of the CMR manganite material La_0.7Ba_0.3MnO₃. CMR manganite materials have been demonstrated to be useful for a variety of technological applications including magnetic sensors and bolometric infrared detectors.

"Learning astronomy at the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory" Rhett Herman, Radford University, Radford, VA rherman@radford.edu
Physics students and faculty from Radford University have taken advantage of using the 40-foot-diameter educational radio telescope at Green Bank NRAO for the past several years. We have found that even on a "getaway" weekend such as this, students tend to put in a great amount of work in learning how to use the equipment, and to interpret and process the data. The question has arisen as to whether course credit should be offered for these weekend trips. And the answer is ...

The local contact for the Spring 2006 meeting is

"http://www.physics.udel.edu/csaapt/index.html"