Comps, honors papers, and prize-winning works of the Physics and Astronomy Department are featured here. All works have been self-submitted by the student authors. Descriptive information about each work is available to search or browse. Access to the full text of the works is limited to current Carleton affiliates with faculty permission. Learn more about how to submit your work and how to request access to the full text of works.
In addition to this digital archive, physical copies of the Physics and Astronomy Department comps from 1978 to 2013 are available at Gould Library.
Submissions from 2023
Ian Wojtowicz, Physics (PHYS) 2023, The Interiors of Neutron Stars
Submissions from 2022
Kevin Clelland, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Radiative Cooling
Leif Dawson, Physics (PHYS) 2022, The Physics of Rivers as Energetic and Material Conduits
Lucas Demetriades, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Sustainable Energy at Carleton College
Kiran Digavalli, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Improving Airliner Efficiency Through Aerodynamic, Thermodynamic, and Metallurgical Design
Larry Donahue, Physics (PHYS) 2022, The Modern Baseball Pitch: A Physical Perspective
Helen Du, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Gate-Based Quantum Computing: Theory and Physical Realization
Gabrielle Evans, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Multi-Discipliniary Physical Analysis of Glass-Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites, Taking Pole Vaulting to New Heights
Pinchen Fan, Physics (PHYS) 2022, The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
Lydia Fick, Physics (PHYS) 2022, The Physics of Snakes
Charles Hall, Physics (PHYS) 2022, The Physics of Audition and Cochlear Implants
Vincent F. He, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Antimatter: Theoretical Foundations and Beyond
Zachary Johnson, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Reaching for the Stars: The Physics of Space Elevators
Allison Keen, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Quenching: The Death of Galaxies
Yuto Miyazawa, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Quantum teleportation and its experimental realization
Ayaka Moriyama, Physics (PHYS) 2022, The Physics of Plasma Gasification with Plasma Arc
Katherine Oda, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Boldly Going, But Should We?: The Next Generation of Extremely Large Telescopes
Daria Palenova, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Physics of Neural Signals
Noah Pinkney, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Quantum Biology, Photosynthesis, and Resonance Energy Transfer
Logan Plasch, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Physics of Nuclear Fusion Reactors
Adam Ross, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Conduction, Electron Energies, and Correlated Electron Materials
Mohammed Mehdi Shahid, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Spinning Pixels: The Physics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Yueheng Shi, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Physics of Laser Cooling
Will Taft, Physics (PHYS) 2022, A Survey of Nuclear Engineering (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Atomic Power)
Yunping Wang, Physics (PHYS) 2022, The Physics of Lithography
Jan Williams, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Sonar, Acoustic Wave Propagation, and Signal Processing
Dylan Willick, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Chaos and Synchronization: An Unlikely Pair
Xinyan Xiang, Physics (PHYS) 2022, Spin Glasses
Submissions from 2021
Charles Bushman, Physics (PHYS) 2021, Physical Reservoir Computing for Classification of Temporal Data
Gregor Dairaghi, Physics (PHYS) 2021, Graphene-Based Smartphone Technologies
Kyle Fraser-Mines, Physics (PHYS) 2021, The Causes and Effects of the Carrington Event
Freja Olsen, Physics (PHYS) 2021, The Tunguska Event
April Reisenfeld, Physics (PHYS) 2021, Understanding Randomness in Classical and Quantum Physics
Evelyn Scott, Physics (PHYS) 2021, An Introduction to Neutrino Astronomy
Claire Williams, Physics (PHYS) 2021, The Far Future of the Universe
Submissions from 2020
Marshall Basson, Physics (PHYS) 2020, Physics of a Classic Rock Album
Grace Betz, Physics (PHYS) 2020, The Physics of Spacecraft: The Ascension
Eric Biddulph-West, Physics (PHYS) 2020, A Hypothetical Concentrating Solar Dish Engine for Energy Autonomous Communities
Sharan Ganjam, Physics (PHYS) 2020, Quantum Dots: Bridging Classical Chaos and Quantum Mechanics
Ann Isaacs, Physics (PHYS) 2020, Gamma Ray Bursts: Phenomenology and Origins
Lawrence Lin, Physics (PHYS) 2020, The Physics of Star Trek
Michael McClurg, Physics (PHYS) 2020, Modeling the Galactic Spiral Structure
Submissions from 2019
Joseph Gais, Physics (PHYS) 2019, The Thermodynamics of Black Holes
Winston T. Goldthwaite, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Classical Laser Cooling and Trapping
Hebba Ashraf Gouda, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Oh, Buoy!
Sacha R. Greenfield, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Conceptualizing quantum mechanics in pilot-wave theory
Abigail Herscovici, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Going with the Flow? Physical Models of Pedestrian Behavior
Kohl Johnson Sparrman, Physics (PHYS) 2019, MRI Imaging: An Investigation of the Underlying Physics
Daniel Cantrell Kupetsky, Physics (PHYS) 2019, The Arrow of Time
Erik Lagerquist, Physics (PHYS) 2019, The Technological Feasibility of Electric VTOL Aircraft for Sustainable Urban Mobility
Andrew David Maris, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Detecting gravitational waves in space: the physics of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA)
Caroline Ann Mather, Physics (PHYS) 2019, The Physics of Auroras
Geoffrey Mo, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Cosmology of the Early Universe
Julianne Pyron, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Astrophysics in Film: The Physics of Interstellar
Emily Kathryn Schwartz, Physics (PHYS) 2019, The Physics of Sustainable Architecture: A Case Study of Carleton College's Science Complex
Sam Stevenson, Physics (PHYS) 2019, X-Wings and Movement: An Exploration of Modern and Near-Future Interstellar Propulsion
Max L. Trostel, Physics (PHYS) 2019, Predicting the Weather: The Physics of Earth’s Atmosphere
Submissions from 2018
Maximiliano Aldo Burgess, Physics (PHYS) 2018, The Raman Effect and Raman Spectroscopy
Gabriel Sebastian Bury, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Curvature of Spacetime: the Kerr metric
Maximilian Foster, Physics (PHYS) 2018, An even briefer history of time
Anne Hamilton, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Key Considerations in Implementation of Solar Photovoltaics
David Guadalupe Higgs, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Plasmonics
Zephyr Lucas, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Diodes
Matthew Thomas Maclay, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Mission to the Outer Solar System
Arthur Richard Chaput McCray, Physics (PHYS) 2018, The Physics of Ice
Henry Alexander Rook, Physics (PHYS) 2018, The Space Cable
John William Scott, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Josephson Junctions: From Physics to Functions
Jonah Krammer Shaw, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Radiative transfer in the earth-atmosphere-space system
Kendra L. Strode, Physics (PHYS) 2018, The CMS Detector at the LHC: Physics of the detector
Duo Tao, Physics (PHYS) 2018, Determining the Accelerating Expansion of the Universe by Observing Type Ia Supernovae
Submissions from 2017
Sanjay Nathan Field Chepuri, Physics (PHYS) 2017, The Cosmic Microwave Background
Mika Chmielewski, Physics (PHYS) 2017, Quantum Computation: Physical Realizations of Qubits and Quantum Gates
Evan Michael David, Physics (PHYS) 2017, The Curious Case of the Missing Mass
Brian Stephen DiGiorgio, Physics (PHYS) 2017, The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
Yuping Huang, Physics (PHYS) 2017, Nuclear Waste Management and Disposal
Qiyuan Hu, Physics (PHYS) 2017, The Physics of Ion Beam Therapy
Paul Jenison Keller, Physics (PHYS) 2017, The Physics of Music
Yuan Shen Li, Physics (PHYS) 2017, An Introduction to Free-electron Lasers
Alphonso Gaston Cera Lopez, Physics (PHYS) 2017, Inventing the Universe of Matter: An Account of the Origin of the Elements by Astrophysical Nucleosynthesis
Moses Misplon, Physics (PHYS) 2017, Closing loopholes in experimental Bell tests
Alexander Christopher Newkirk, Physics (PHYS) 2017, The Evolution of C:The Development of the Modern Understanding of Light Speed
Joshua Bowman Ruebeck, Physics (PHYS) 2017, Quantum Communication, Shannon Theory, and Error Correction
Adam Alexei Rutkowski, Physics (PHYS) 2017, Physics of Fusion Energy
Submissions from 2016
Kathleen I. Casados, Physics (PHYS) 2016, Exploring the Physics of Diamonds and Their Applications
Natasha Alexis Flowers, Physics (PHYS) 2016, The Origins of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Berit Hansen Goodge, Physics (PHYS) 2016, Micro-scale Energy Generation
Brandon Michael Hagans, Physics (PHYS) 2016, Spacecraft Propulsion
Adam John Lacroix, Physics (PHYS) 2016, An Analysis of Space Elevator Physics
Nathaniel Allen Strauss, Physics (PHYS) 2016, The Thermodynamics of Black Holes: Energy and Quantum Mechanics in Spacetime
Hayden Phillip Tornabene, Physics (PHYS) 2016, Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry: Why is there something and not nothing?
Mason Fobes White, Physics (PHYS) 2016, The Physics of Self-Driving Cars
Jordan Michael Zoellmer, Physics (PHYS) 2016, The Global Position System: An Introduction to the Background and Physics
Submissions from 2015
Brian Isaac Charous, Physics (PHYS) 2015, The Physics and Design of Antennas
Ross James Jennings, Physics (PHYS) 2015, The Formation of Planets
Melody Paz Judilla, Physics (PHYS) 2015, Explosions in Space: Core-Collapse Supernovae
Stephen Erwin Kuenstner, Physics (PHYS) 2015, Scanning Tunneling Microscopy
Ben Emery Levy, Physics (PHYS) 2015, Thunderstorms, Lightning, and Lightning Strikes on Aircraft
Shail Maharshi Mehta, Physics (PHYS) 2015, An Analysis of the Physical Principles Underlying Limb Prosthetics and Associated Control Mechanisms
Andrew Davis Polasky, Physics (PHYS) 2015, The Physics of Weather Prediction
Carolyn Raithel, Physics (PHYS) 2015, The Astrophysics of Cosmic Rays
