11/21/04

Hi to all SPS@UNLV members!

Thank you all for attending the second SPS meeting. We were 16 - that is six more than during our first meeting!
Thank you very much Amo and Jim for your very cool presentation!
Also thank you John for catering the pizzas and thanks to the officers Ed and Mike for helping me organize the meeting.

Some really great news:
I spoke with our advisor, Prof. Selser and he said that the Department may be interested in helping us financially in preparing things for the World Year of Physics celebration on March 14, 2005!
During the SPS meeting we talked about some very interesting ideas - carnival-style celebration in the MSU courtyard with physics-related demonstrations like the Van de Graaff generator, a hydraulic lift etc...

Now comes the time to put everything in writing. So, before the next meeting (two weeks from now, Fri. 12/03) I invite everyone to pick their favorite idea(s) and e-mail me a very brief summary on how to build it (lots of ready instructions can be found on the web: for example here is a page about the Van de Graaff generator: http://www.amasci.com/emotor/vdg.html ).
I will put together an agenda for our next meeting, during which we will decide together what we want to build - so be sure to attend!

Finally a small technical remainder: all SPS group actions have to be approved by the officers (and sometimes also by our advisor) so if you are planning on undertaking ANY action on BEHALF of SPS as a group, you are very welcome, but please first discuss it with one of the SPS officers (Ed Romano ‘ed-rom@cox.net’ or Mike Brawner ‘ares_phobos@yahoo.com’ or myself ‘patrizia@physics.unlv.edu’).

Also the more we are the better, so let other physics students know about our next meeting Friday, Dec. 3rd at noon.

Have great Thanksgiving Hollidays!

Patricia Kalita
SPS president