Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Heat And Work, The First Law Of Thermodynamics From The Boltzmann Pov, Carl W. David Dec 2018

Heat And Work, The First Law Of Thermodynamics From The Boltzmann Pov, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

The First Law of Thermodynamics is discussed in terms of the Boltzmann distribution.


Summertime Connecticut River Water Pathways And Wind Impacts, Yan Jia, Michael M. Whitney Dec 2018

Summertime Connecticut River Water Pathways And Wind Impacts, Yan Jia, Michael M. Whitney

Department of Marine Sciences

Long Island Sound is a large macrotidal estuary. Connecticut River as the primary freshwater source enters near the sound’s mouth. The summertime pathways of river water under low discharge and mild wind conditions are studied through both numerical simulations with a passive dye pulse and field surface drifter observations. Within the 19-day modeling analysis period, a third of the river dye pulse moves up-estuary with the near-bottom dense inflow into central and western sound with a spring-neap tidal modulation; another third leaves the sound with the near-surface outflow towards the continental shelf through Block Island Sound. The latter pathway is …


Spontaneity, Carl W. David Nov 2018

Spontaneity, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

An attempt is made to better understand thermodynamic spontaneity.


The Legendre Transformation For Beginning Thermodynamics Students, Carl W. David Nov 2018

The Legendre Transformation For Beginning Thermodynamics Students, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

The Legendre Transform, as traditionally taught in introductory Physical Chemistry classes, can be better understood with some simple examples, which are discussed herein.


Infra-Red Microwave Spectra, Overtones, Degeneracy And Thermal Populations All In One Diagram, Carl W. David Aug 2018

Infra-Red Microwave Spectra, Overtones, Degeneracy And Thermal Populations All In One Diagram, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

An old drawing, which had an error in it, is re-presented (corrected) for understanding the relationships in diatomic vibrational-rotational interactions at the introductory level.


The Commutator Of The Runge Lenz Vector With Other Operators Of The H-Atoms Physics Using Maxima, Carl W. David Jul 2018

The Commutator Of The Runge Lenz Vector With Other Operators Of The H-Atoms Physics Using Maxima, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

Commutators of components of the Runge-Lenz vector and constants of the motion and ladder operators for the H-atom problem are evaluated using brute force calculus and Maxima.


Lattice Dynamical Origins Of Structural Negative Thermal Expansion, Connor A. Occhialini May 2018

Lattice Dynamical Origins Of Structural Negative Thermal Expansion, Connor A. Occhialini

Honors Scholar Theses

Most materials, upon heating, expand into a larger volume through an effect known as thermal expansion. However, some materials do not obey this intuitive phenomenon and instead exhibit negative thermal expansion (NTE), which describes the anomalous propensity of these materials to shrink when warmed. Since its discovery, NTE has been found in a wide variety of materials with an array of magnetic, electronic and structural properties. In some cases, the NTE originates from the electronic degrees of freedom in the system or through magnetic phase competition, but we here focus on a particular class of NTE which originates solely from …


Computational Analysis Of Poliovirus Structural Dynamics Using A Coarse-Grained Model, Maneesh Koneru May 2018

Computational Analysis Of Poliovirus Structural Dynamics Using A Coarse-Grained Model, Maneesh Koneru

University Scholar Projects

Though eradicated in most of the world, poliovirus remains a common model virus for a family of mammalian viruses known as Picornaviruses. Despite the development of a vaccination, little is understood about the infection process, particularly the mechanism of cell entry. Experimental studies have attempted to elucidate the dynamics of this process and have proposed pathways focused on VP4, the smallest of the four peptides which makes up the viral capsid, and its interaction with the pentameric interfaces of the five fold axes. This study utilizes coarse-grained molecular dynamics to supplement these proposed mechanisms with simplified simulations which reduce the …


Harmonic Functions And Harmonic Measure, David Mcdonald May 2018

Harmonic Functions And Harmonic Measure, David Mcdonald

Honors Scholar Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to give a brief introduction to the field of harmonic measure. In order to do this we first introduce a few important properties of harmonic functions and show how to find a Green’s function for a given domain. Following this we calculate the harmonic measure for some easy cases and end by examining the connection between harmonic measure and Brownian motion.


Minimization Techniques For Symbolic Automata, Jonathan Homburg May 2018

Minimization Techniques For Symbolic Automata, Jonathan Homburg

Honors Scholar Theses

Symbolic finite automata (SFAs) are generalizations of classical finite state automata. Whereas the transitions of classical automata are labeled by characters from some alphabet, the transitions of symbolic automata are labeled by predicates over a Boolean algebra defined on the alphabet. This allows for SFAs to be efficiently constructed over extremely large, and possibly infinite, alphabets. This thesis examines an existing incremental algorithm for the minimization of deterministic finite automata. Several extensions of this algorithm to de- terministic symbolic automata are introduced. Although more efficient algorithms already exist for deterministic SFA minimization, the presented algorithms are uniquely designed to minimize …


Errata For Manuscript #34, Carl W. David, Jan Siroky Apr 2018

Errata For Manuscript #34, Carl W. David, Jan Siroky

Chemistry Education Materials

An error in manuscript 34 of this collection concerning the Laplacian in spherical polar coordinates is corrected.


Use Of The Proof-Of-Stake Algorithm For Distributed Consensus In Blockchain Protocol For Cryptocurrency, Spencer J. Hosack Apr 2018

Use Of The Proof-Of-Stake Algorithm For Distributed Consensus In Blockchain Protocol For Cryptocurrency, Spencer J. Hosack

Honors Scholar Theses

Recent attention to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has opened investors and the public to the realm of digital currency. Greater exposure around the world has led to a frenzy of entry into the market and a test into the long-term feasibility of Bitcoin being able to remain a functioning peer-to-peer (P2P), decentralized currency. Its main structure is supported by the Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol in which users can elect to participate in determining transaction approval and ensuring an honest blockchain. This system relies on elected users to expend computational power and energy to solve puzzles to prove the accuracy of the …


The Psychology Of Baseball: How The Mental Game Impacts The Physical Game, Kiera Dalmass Apr 2018

The Psychology Of Baseball: How The Mental Game Impacts The Physical Game, Kiera Dalmass

Honors Scholar Theses

The purpose of this study was to find whether or not sports psychology can be effective. Baseball was chosen as the sport for the study because baseball can be analyzed for nearly every single factor of the game, with the exception of the mental readiness or state of the player when he steps onto the field. It therefore provides the optimal atmosphere to provide clinical and statistical support to the field of sports psychology. Despite the various, numerous pieces of literature that praise and show support for sports psychology, there hasn’t been clinical research to support it. Additionally, multiple sports …


The Van Der Waals Fluid's Liquid Vapor Coexistence Locus, Carl W. David Jan 2018

The Van Der Waals Fluid's Liquid Vapor Coexistence Locus, Carl W. David

Chemistry Education Materials

The liquid vapor coexistence locus is plotted from the analytical solution to the Maxwell construction for the van der Waals fluid.