Colloquium
Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 pm in Shanahan B460. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.

Nov. 16, 2021 | Yilin Li, Lingyuan Lyu, and Cathy Chang, Harvey Mudd College Senior Theses Talks #6 |
Please join us on Tuesday (11/16/21 at 4:30pm) for our sixth round of senior theses talks. Yilin Li: “Testing One-way EPR Steering and Other Entanglement Witnesses” Lingyuan Lyu: “Modeling the Rotational Evolution of T Tauri Stars -- the effects of radius and magnetic field” Cathy Chang: “Autonomous Drone System for Diverting Mammalian Pests” | |
Nov. 9, 2021 | Luis Hidalgo, Benjamin Khoury, and Kate Lord, Harvey Mudd College Senior Theses Talks #5 |
Please join us on Tuesday (11/9/21 at 4:30pm) for our fifth round of senior theses talks.
Luis Hidalgo: “Closing gaps in dark matter searches in LHC experiments” Benjamin Khoury: “Dark Matter Interactions Through ALPs” Kate Lord: “Violating Bell's Inequality Using a Sagnac Source” |
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Nov. 2, 2021 | Natalia Hernandez, Andrew Chen, and Avalon Feiler, Harvey Mudd College Senior Theses Talks #4 |
Please join us on Tuesday (11/2/21 at 4:30pm) for our fourth round of senior theses talks.
Natalia Hernandez: “Comparing Iridates via X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy” Andrew Chen: “Simulating Viscoelastic Wave Propagation in Uniaxial Recoil” Avalon Feiler: “Latch dynamics of the larval mantis shrimp raptorial strike” |
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Oct. 26, 2021 | Savanah Diaz, Anna Soper, and Victoria Lloyd, Harvey Mudd College Senior Theses Talks #3 |
Please join us on Tuesday, 10/26/21 at 4:30pm as three HMC physics majors talk about their senior theses. Savanah Diaz: "An electronic analysis of aluminum's effects on high entropy, ferritic stainless steel substitutes" | |
Oct. 12, 2021 | Kaveh Pezeshki, Rebecca Chan, and Noah Haig and Harry Sanchez (MIT/Lincoln Labs Clinic), Harvey Mudd College Senior Theses Talks #2 |
Please join us on Tuesday, 10/12/21 at 4:30pm as three HMC physics majors talk about their senior theses. Kaveh Pezeshki: "Charge Density Waves in GdTe3 Thin Films" |
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Oct. 5, 2021 | Georgia Newman, Chloe Taylor, and Rafael Porto, Harvey Mudd College Senior Theses Talks |
Please join us on Tuesday, 10/5/21 at 4:30pm as three HMC physics majors talk about their senior theses. Georgia Newman: “Anisotropic Magnetoresistance of Single Crystal FeRh Thin Films” Chloe Taylor: “Large Interlayer Exchange Coupling and Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy in Ir-based Synthetic Antiferromagnets” Rafael Porto: “Dark Matter and Freeze-in Leptogenesis” |
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Sept. 28, 2021 | Prof. Brian Shuve, Harvey Mudd College How (Not) to Give a Talk |
Join us as Prof. Shuve leads our discussion on how to give effective talks and what to avoid to prevent 'losing' your audience. This meeting will be virtual, so please use the zoom link below.
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Sept. 21, 2021 | Wylie Rosenthal '12, Carla Becker '18, Colin Adams '19, and Rachel Barcklay '20, Harvey Mudd College Alumni Career Session |
Four HMC alumni will discuss their career paths after leaving HMC. This is your chance to pick their brains and ask them questions about getting a job and what life after college is like. This meeting will be virtual, so please use the zoom link below. https://hmc-edu.zoom.us/j/91887995671?pwd=b0hMTEkxWk5oTTUwVUlXWnA2cDFsQT09 |
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Sept. 14, 2021 | Various HMC Physics Faculty, Harvey Mudd College Fellowships and Scholarships 101 |
This colloquium will be about fellowships and scholarships as they apply to graduate school and post-baccalaureate programs. We will also be presenting the Bell, Rojansky, Townsend, and Physics Community Awards. This meeting will be virtual, so please use the zoom link below. https://hmc-edu.zoom.us/j/
(image from flaticon.com) |
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Sept. 7, 2021 | Various HMC Physics Faculty, Harvey Mudd College Graduate School 101 |
This colloquium will be an informational meeting about graduate school, so bring your burning questions in! Various HMC Physics Faculty will talk about graduate programs and options. The application process will also be discussed. This will be virtual, so please use the zoom link below. |
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April 27, 2021 | Trieu Mai, National Renewable Energy Laboratory 100% Renewable Electricity for the U.S.: Is it possible? Would it be enough? |
A key pillar to decarbonizing the energy system is to clean up the electricity system primarily through renewable resources like wind and solar. Numerous studies have examined the impact of greater deployment of these technologies and new ambitions call for renewable energy to provide 100% of U.S. electricity generation—for example, President Biden calls for 100% clean energy by 2035. Over … |
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April 13, 2021 | Dave Stegman, Scripps Institution of Oceanography A Brief History of Earth’s Magnetic Field |
The initial condition of the Earth, following a moon-forming impact, was likely to be a completely molten state, and estimates of the melting curve for lower mantle compositions indicate that the magma ocean would solidify from the middle out, trapping about 1000 km of molten mantle between the core and overlying solid mantle, referred … |
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April 6, 2021 | Michael T. Montgomery, Naval Postgraduate School The Dynamics of Tropical Cyclogenesis and Intensification |
To forecast tropical cyclones, or to determine possible changes in their climatology as a result of global warming, we need a conceptual model of how tropical cyclones work.
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March 30, 2021 | Srividya Iyer-Biswas, Purdue University How Life Shapes Time |
There has been a longstanding quest for uncovering the quantitative laws governing the stochastic growth and division of individual cells. While great strides have been made in unravelling and modeling the details of the gene regulatory networks which dictate growth and division for different organisms, there is a regrettable paucity of quantitative physical laws derived from the complementary “top down” … |
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March 23, 2021 | Franklin Dollar, University of California at Irvine Moore’s Law for Lawrence’s Device: Shrinking the Particle Accelerator |
As Moore’s law continues to push forward semiconductor devices, we are now seeing commercial devices with feature sizes below 5 nanometers. Through the use of high power, short pulse lasers, a technology which warranted the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, an analogous revolution is set to occur in particle accelerators. These new laser driven accelerators can achieve efficient acceleration of particles … |