PHYSICS
These are what I consider the significant physics projects that
I have participated in. As these are undergraduate works, they are not
necessarily thorough or correct. They are also heavily based on other
works; if my experiments spark your interest, I highly recommend looking up the
references to learn more.
In the 2001-2002 school year, I was the Vice-President of the Society
for Physics Students at the University of Houston.
-
- Over the 2002 summer, I worked at the USDA-ARS-NGPRS
where I was listed as a coauthor of the paper (still in peer review):
"AEPAT:
Software for Assessing Agronomic and Environmental Performance of Management
Practices in Long-Term Agroecosystem Experiments"
by Mark A. Liebig*, Martin E. Miller, Gary
E. Varvel, John W. Doran, and Jon D. Hanson
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- Chemoelecticity and Self-Organized Criticality
- &
Summarial Slides
An
undergraduate laboratory project conducted by Martin
Miller and based on the work of Dr.
John Miller and James
Claycomb of the University of Houston TCSUH.
This was the first time that this particular phenomenon was measured
for this purpose and computed in our lab. The non-chaotic
"stable" electro-chemical reactions have been extensively
studied, but the "chaotic" states (those occurring during an
active chemical reaction) have typically been ignored. James
Claycomb used high-temperature superconductors to measure the magnetic
fields generated during some chemical reactions, and found an SOC
pattern. My experiment grows from that and measures the
corresponding electric field. While the magnetic fields are
expensive and complicated to measure, the electric field measurement
could be performed in any high school laboratory, which is impressive
considering the complexity of the phenomenon being measured.
(Fall 2000, University of Houston, Physics)
-
- This material contributed to the publication of the paper by
Dr. Miller:
- "Avalanche Behavior in the Dynamics of Chemical Reactions",
Physical Review Letters, vol. 87, 178303 (2001).
|
- Period
Dynamics of the B-Z (Belousov-Zhabotinskii) Reaction
- & Simplified
Theoretical Model
& Summarial
Slides (Caution: long download. Contains 13MB of lab video in avi/divx
format)
- An undergraduate laboratory project conducted by Julia
Lenzi and Martin Miller
inspired by the work of Dr.
Harry Swinney in the chaos laboratory at UT.
- The B-Z reaction is a bistable chemical
reaction discovered by Belousov in 1958. Once started, it will oscillate between the two stable
states until energy is dissipated. Small perturbations and
impurities can manifest themselves as patterns, spirals in particular,
in the reaction. A special form of this reaction is
inhibited/activated by bright light.
The time-dependent period of oscillation can be used to make
comparative inferences about the rate of energy dissipation in the
system.
(Spring 2001, University of Houston, Physics)
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