Summer 2013

This summer I have been examining a phenomenological model of the flow in a rotating can, which may be analogous to submesoscale ocean eddy flow. I hope to spend the rest of the summer investigating the effect the overturning rate has on modeled phytoplankton growth through a simple quadratic NPZ model using the rotating can flow. Read on for more of what's been done so far.

Monte Carlo Simulations

A Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is a method commonly used in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.  While in general MC is just a sampling scheme, it is normally used for importance sampling.  The MC method starts from a given 'position' and takes a random walk, returning information from wherever it travels.  With importance sampling, MC does not take a purely random walk, but instead will take a random step and then check the final position against some requirement. If the final position meets the requirements, the information for that position is recorded as data and a new step is tried. Otherwise, the simulation goes back and takes a new random step.

Janus Particles and Spheres

So, posting about the project right away didn't happen because deciding on the project didn't happen and then coding didn't happen. But now it all has!

I'm working in theoretical statistical mechanics with Professor Jim Gunton at Lehigh. More specifically, this summer the research group is studying anisotropic (orientation-dependent) Janus particles.

Really awesome physics simulator

I was sent this link last summer, and the videos blew my mind. In case the link's not working for you, it goes to an article about Lagoa Multiphysics, a 3D graphics program. Now, I know next to nothing about how physics simulations are done for videos (video games, movies, and all that), but based on how complicated physics is for a two-body system, it blows my mind that people are able to get such realistic models for such complicated motions. I'd love to see the approximations used for all this stuff. Oh, and if you're the type who wants to do this kind of work, friends of mine at RPI have complained enough about programing the physics for a computer game that I'm pretty sure studying there would be a good first step.