Physics Department, University of Northern Iowa

Physics Department, University of Northern Iowa "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein

The UNI Physics department specializes in hands-on undergraduate education designed to prepare physics and physics education majors for the rigors of the real world. Our students are challenged in the classroom, the research lab, and as teachers themselves. Our department specializes in materials research; electronics, robotics, and computer interfacing, nano-science, and physics education. We al

so partner with other departments to provide exciting opportunities in astrophysics, bio-medical careers, and business & entrepreneurship.

1. Physics and Science Education faculty member Larry Escalada attended Physics Day at Adventureland near Des Moines las...
05/04/2026

1. Physics and Science Education faculty member Larry Escalada attended Physics Day at Adventureland near Des Moines last Friday. About 500 students from 15 different Iowa high schools attended the event, which was the pilot for what will hopefully become an annual event. Larry reports that it was a great experience for all involved, so it looks likely that we will see this again next year!

2. It’s last week of instruction for the Spring 2026 semester! The time has absolutely flown by. As the Spring semester winds down, we are gearing up for summer research. There are 8 summer research fellows this year. We look forward to a productive summer of research!

3. Did you know that the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Aage Niels Bohr for his work on the structure of the atomic nucleus? If that name rings a bell, it’s for good reason - his father was the legendary Niels Bohr. Interestingly, the Bohrs aren't the only ones to keep the Nobel in the family. In fact, there are four father-son duos who have both reached the pinnacle of physics. Here are the names.

1) The Braggs (1915): Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg. (The only pair to win it in the same year! Picture below).
2) The Bohrs: Niels Bohr (1922) and Aage Bohr (1975).
3) The Siegbahns: Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn (1924) and Kai M. Siegbahn (1981).
4) The Thomsons: J.J. Thomson (1906) and George Paget Thomson (1937).

1. The Physics Awards Banquet was held last Friday in the Maucker Union. There were about 35 people in attendance, inclu...
04/27/2026

1. The Physics Awards Banquet was held last Friday in the Maucker Union. There were about 35 people in attendance, including family and friends of physics students and faculty. The event included a delicious meal followed by amazing chocolate cake. Wilson Rojas of UNI’s Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning gave a talk on Artificial Intelligence, and then students received prizes or certificates for various departmental awards and scholarships. Graduating and transferring 3+2 students were presented with gifts. It was a lovely evening and we look forward to next year’s event!

2. On Wednesday, Dr. Zahra Aminzare of the University of Iowa Department of Mathematics will present the final Physics Colloquium talk of the 2025-26 academic year. The title is “How can animals walk without a brain?” Intriguing question. Attend the talk to learn the answer! The presentation takes place at 4:00 p.m. in 114 Begeman Hall. See you there!

3. Did you know? One of nature’s most elusive phenomena is ball lightning—a glowing, floating orb that often appears during intense thunderstorms. For centuries, scientists met thousands of eyewitness reports with skepticism. Because ball lightning is so rare and unpredictable, it proved nearly impossible to capture on film or reproduce under controlled conditions. This lack of hard evidence kept the phenomenon on the fringes of atmospheric science. In recent years, however, the mystery has begun to unravel. Researchers have proposed several theories, ranging from vaporized silicon to self-contained electromagnetic fields, and have even succeeded in creating brief, ball-like discharges in laboratory settings. Despite this progress, the true nature of ball lightning remains one of the most fascinating unsolved mysteries in the natural world.

1. Physics students will actually be launching their rockets on Wednesday of this week (not last week). The weather look...
04/22/2026

1. Physics students will actually be launching their rockets on Wednesday of this week (not last week). The weather looks to be excellent, so blast-off should be a go. Cedar Falls, we have no problems.

2. Sixth graders from Cedar Falls schools will be visiting the Physics Department on Thursday. They will be engaging in standing wave activities that provide insight into quantum physics and quantum computing. We look forward to hosting the 6th graders!

3. Physics students presented at the INSPIRE conference held at UNI last week. This is likely the last of the several conferences that our students have attended and presented at this academic year. It has been a banner year for undergraduate research in physics!

4. Did you know? While most Nobel Prizes in Physics are awarded for groundbreaking discoveries or explanations of observed phenomena, the first American to win the prize, Albert Michelson, was recognized for an experiment that yielded a "null result." In 1887, Michelson and Edward Morley conducted a series of experiments at what is now Case Western Reserve University, proving the non-existence of the "luminiferous aether" - the substance once thought to be the medium for light waves. Their findings paved the way for Lorentz’s research and eventually culminated in Einstein’s theory of special relativity.

1. Both the State of Iowa Physics Competition and the Science Education Update Conference that were held last week were ...
04/13/2026

1. Both the State of Iowa Physics Competition and the Science Education Update Conference that were held last week were smashing successes. Nearly 200 students participated in the Physics Competition. Between events, some students engaged in a scavenger hunt around Begeman Hall. These students thereby received a self-guided tour of Begeman Hall! The overall winner of the competition was Dubuque Hempstead. Congrats to Hempstead! The Update Conference brought many teachers from across Iowa to UNI. They attended informative sessions, including one on capacitors presented by Physics faculty member Jeff Morgan. Massive thanks to Larry Escalada for coordinating both events!

2. The Physics Club will launch the rockets on Wednesday of this week. Last week, they built and optimized the rockets. Hopefully, the weather will not force the launches to be scrubbed.

3. Did you know? Most of the particles our matter is composed of are so called Dirac fermions. These particles have a distinct “twin”, called antiparticle (see our earlier post), which possesses the same mass but opposite charge. In contrast, Majorana fermions are equivalent to their own antiparticles, i.e., they are completely neutral. While this concept was proposed by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937, it remains one of the biggest mysteries of physics. These particles have never been discovered, and although it is hypothesized that neutrinos may be Majorana fermions, the argument is not settled yet. The disappearance of Ettore Majorana also remains one of the biggest mysteries of physics history. His mentor Enrico Fermi considered him one of the biggest scientific geniuses, at the rank of Newton and Galilei. On 25 March 1938, Majorana purchased a ticket for a boat trip from Palermo to Naples. He was 31, and he was never seen again.

1. The annual State of Iowa Physics Competition will be held on Tuesday of this week (April 7) in the Maucker Union and ...
04/08/2026

1. The annual State of Iowa Physics Competition will be held on Tuesday of this week (April 7) in the Maucker Union and Begeman Hall. Nearly 200 high-school students from across Iowa will participate in five events: Flying Machine, Mousetrap Car, Catapult, Optical Slalom and Fermi Questions. The is the second year that the event will be held in the Union, i.e., central campus. (It used to be held in the McLeod Center.) This is the first year that some events will be held in Begeman Hall, where student research posters will be on display. A scavenger hunt will also be conducted. We look forward to an exciting and successful event!

2. On Friday (April 10), the annual Science Education Update Conference will be held in the Maucker Union. K-12 teachers from across Iowa will gather to attend informational sessions and to network. Faculty members from UNI, Wartburg, and Iowa State will lead sessions that to provide information on new research and trends in K-12 teaching and pedagogy. Larry Escalada is the coordinator for both the Physics Competition and the Update Conference. He will be a very busy guy this week.

3. The Physics Club will be launching rockets on Wednesday (April 8). This has become an annual event, which happens to be well-timed – the Artemis II moon mission is currently underway. We look forward to seeing how high the rockets travel before gravity wins the battle.

4. Did you know? The existence of positron (the electron's antiparticle) was first proposed in 1928 by Paul Dirac in his seminal paper on relativistic quantum mechanics. While the particle was experimentally confirmed in 1932 - followed by the discovery of various other antiparticles - macroscopic quantities of antimatter have never been synthesized or observed. The mystery of why matter dominates over antimatter (which is essentially equivalent to asking why there is something rather than nothing) is one of the biggest unanswered questions in physics.

There will be a Physics Colloquium on Wednesday of this week. The title is "Integrating NASA Data Archives, Computationa...
03/30/2026

There will be a Physics Colloquium on Wednesday of this week. The title is "Integrating NASA Data Archives, Computational Tools, and Virtual Labs for Undergraduate Astronomy Research.” The speaker is Dr. Mojgan Haghanikar, who is in the Physics & Astronomy Division of the SETI Institute. The presentation will be done via Zoom. The link is below. We hope you can join us. With the Artemis II mission to the moon scheduled for liftoff this week, this is a timely presentation!

https://uni.zoom.us/j/91849459680?pwd=ZTlTcjVUeU1xZjhsSUhFYXkweC9Fdz09

Did you know? The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for their discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) - the phenomenon where electrical resistance changes based on the magnetization direction in thin-film structures. While this discovery may be relatively unknown outside of scientific circles, nearly everyone is familiar with its primary application: the high-density hard disk drives used in modern computers. The discovery of GMR in 1988 paved the way for spintronics (or spin electronics), a fundamentally new field of technology.

Nine physics majors and 2 faculty members just returned from the Global Physics Summit conference in Denver, Colorado. D...
03/23/2026

Nine physics majors and 2 faculty members just returned from the Global Physics Summit conference in Denver, Colorado. During the weeklong conference, the students and faculty gave presentations on their research and listened to presentations from other researchers, including recent Physics Nobel Prize winners. Everyone had a great time in Denver, and now it’s back to classes!

There is a special Physics Colloquium on Wednesday. The physics majors who attended the Global Physics Summit conference will give brief presentations about their experiences at the conference. We look forward to hearing some fun stories. (No, these are not technical presentations.) The colloquium will be held in 114 Begeman Hall and starts at 4:00 p.m.

The Iowa regional FIRST Robotics competition will be held in the McLeod Center at UNI this week (Thursday – Saturday). It’s always fun to watch the high-school students put their robots through their paces. On Thursday evening, UNI Physics will conduct a quantum science activity for the students, as they relax after a stressful day of tending to their robots.

Did you know? The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization in electric circuits. Among other things, this discovery enabled modern superconducting qubits and quantum computing. Last week, nine UNI Physics students attended a special session of the American Physical Society (APS) Global Physics Summit in Denver, where Professors Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis presented invited talks discussing their groundbreaking discovery.

Save the Date!! April 16, 2026 is UNI's Day of Giving.
03/23/2026

Save the Date!!
April 16, 2026 is UNI's Day of Giving.

The Begeman Lecture is on Wednesday of this week (March 11). Dr. Peter Behroozi will give a lecture titled: “Reconstruct...
03/09/2026

The Begeman Lecture is on Wednesday of this week (March 11). Dr. Peter Behroozi will give a lecture titled: “Reconstructing the Cosmos to Understand Our Origins.” The venue is the Lang Hall Auditorium. The lecture will start at 7:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome to attend. Bring the whole family!

Nine students and two faculty members from UNI Physics will travel to Denver, CO for the Global Physics Summit next week during Spring Break. The Global Physics Summit is the largest physics conference in the world. Our students and faculty will give presentations on their research and also learn about what other researchers are doing. The UNI contingent will be in Denver for the entire weeklong conference, so they will have a lot to report when they return. We hope to have some pictures to share with you after the conference!

Did you know? The English musician, Brian May, who is mostly known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen, is also an accomplished physicist. He holds a BS degree in physics (with honours) and a PhD degree in astrophysics from Imperial College London. Although his fame is mostly due to his virtuoso guitar skills, he published a few peer-reviewed physics papers and briefly collaborated with NASA.

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215 Begeman Hall
Cedar Falls, IA
50614

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Wednesday 7:30am - 5pm
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