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 2026
Malcolm Parnall, Physics (PHYS) 2026, The Plasma Display Panel
Submissions from 2025
Marcos Acero, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Quantum Sensors and the Evolution of Quantum Measurement
Brendan Banfield, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Physical Reservoir Computing
Amanda Black, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Thorium-based Fuel as the Future of Nuclear Energy
Quinn Brannan, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Seeing the Unseen: Signal Processing and Electronic Beam Steering in RADAR
James Commons, Physics (PHYS) 2025, The World's Fastest Camera: Attosecond Laser Pulses
Micah Day-O'Connell, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Physics and Information Theory
Shaan Dias, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Matter-wave Atomic Gradiometer Interferometric Sensor: Detecting Gravitational Waves with Atom Interferometry
Adward Frazier Jr, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Smartphone Inertial Measurement Unit System
Alex Gran, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Physics of Superconducting Qubits
Youssef Haddad, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Introduction to Photonic Integrated Circuits
Oliver J. Licht, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Unraveling the Physics Behind Digital Photography
Christopher Maring, Physics (PHYS) 2025, The Physics of Cooling: Techniques, Purposes, and Phenomena Near Absolute Zero
Kaia Neal, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Glacier Flow Dynamics
Jyothi Nellakra, Physics (PHYS) 2025, The Physics of Speech Production & the Vocal Tract
Isaac Orman, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Probing the Quantum World with Ultracold Atoms
Ryan Quinn, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Feynman Path Integrals
Adam J. Rothman, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Take a Second – Make a Second: Modeling the Atomic Transition that Defines the Time Standard
Josiah Tusler, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Remnants of Stars Past - The Formation of Supernova Remnants
Selma N. Vangstein, Physics (PHYS) 2025, Hawking Radiation
Noel Wang, Physics (PHYS) 2025, En-lightning Ideas: The Physics of a Thunderstorm
Submissions from 2024
Evan Arch, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Topological Quantum Computing
Mary Blanchard, Physics (PHYS) 2024, How Do We Understand Magnetism?
Malachy Bloom, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Cosmic Inflation
Henry Bowman, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Here Comes the Sun: An Overview of Semiconductor Photovoltaics
Corrina Callahan, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Geothermal Energy
Rowan Dong, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Whales: The Physics of Underwater Life
Grace Gatewood, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Astronomical Imaging
Zev Goldhaber-Gordon, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Shockingly Static: Models of the Triboelectric Effect in Solids
Yusuf Ismail, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Experimental Quantum Computing
Maya Khesin, Physics (PHYS) 2024, The Physics of Ocean Wave Energy Harvesting
Susanna Kisker, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Avian Magnetoreception: The Radical Pair Mechanism
Yuelin Kuang, Physics (PHYS) 2024, The Physics of Topological Insulators
Tosh X.K. Le, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Nuclear Fusion: Always Twenty Years Away? Or Closer Than We Think?
Luis Miranda, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Effect of Coronal Mass Ejections on Solar Wind and its Earthly Consequences
Ian Paulson, Physics (PHYS) 2024, Applications of Coherent Macroscopic Wavefunctions in Superconducting Material
Submissions from 2023
Sebastian Fallon, Physics (PHYS) 2023, The Anomalous Zeeman Effect
Joshua S. Hanson-Kaplan, Physics (PHYS) 2023, The Higgs Boson, a Portal to the Dark Sector?
Elise Knutsen, Physics (PHYS) 2023, The Physics of Non-Volatile Solid State Memory
Kanishk Pandey, Physics (PHYS) 2023, Exploring the Images of the James Webb Space Telescope, a $10 Billion Time Machine
Natalie Soehnlin, Physics (PHYS) 2023, Global Warming and Its Effects on Astronomical Observations
Frank Sottrel, Physics (PHYS) 2023, Quantum Decoherence and the Problems it Solves
Andrew Thompson, Physics (PHYS) 2023, Optimizing the Ballistic Performance and Safety of Centerfire Rifles
Ben Turner, Physics (PHYS) 2023, The Physics of Satellite Internet: Formation of a New Artificial Constellation
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
