IcelandHill
Taos, New Mexico                                                                             25 December 2024
USM Jupyterhub Server
Courses: Spring 2025 

Phy 251: Principles of Electronics
Tu Th 11:00 - 13:50 Sci
An introduction to electronics including DC and AC circuits, transistors, operational amplifiers, and (at instructor discretion) combinatorial and sequential logic devices. The laboratory will cover the use of electronic instrumentation as well as illustrate principles.

Fall 2025

Phy 261: Computational Physics 
M W F 11:00 - 12:05 

Phy341 Quantum Mechanics
Tu Th  09:30 - 10:45 

Student/Office Hours (Office: 224 Science; Lab: 252 Science)

In general, I am in my office or lab and am available; but contact me for a specific time. 

Research and Teaching Interests
Computational Physics: I use Python and Julia (almost exclusively Julia now) for all my computing needs, as well as for teaching Physics 261: Computational Physics.

Torsion Pendulum Magnetometer: Together with many students, I have designed a torsion pendulum that will be used to measure fluctuations in the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field.

Physics Education: My main inspiration for physics education came from reading the works of Carl R. Rogers (Freedom to Learn and it's revisions). I have been incorporating authentic assessment and conceptual questioning into my introductory physics classes. In addition, together with other faculty at USM, and the help of our Provost, we helped create a Learning Assistant program at USM.

Curriculum Vitae: Click CurriculumVitae2019 to download in PDF format. The file includes as an attachment, the original LaTeX source which you can feel free to extract (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Pro 8.0 or later) or PDF Expert (OSX App) and use as a LaTeX CV template. (updated 05-Nov-2019)

Publications:
• Smoothing.jl: a simple package that contains a binomial smoothing routine for apply to a time series. To install, just say > add Smoothing from withing the Julia package manager.
• labjack-controller: Robust and Easy Data Collection with Labjack T-Series DAQs in Python
Vector plot of Helmholtz Coil in Earth's Magnetic Field, from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project,Cody Goolsby and Paul Nakroshis, Dec. 2011

The Headlight Effect, from the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, October 2007
Measuring Boltzmann's constant using video microscopy of Brownian motion, American Journal of Physics, 71 (6) June 2003

Statistics of continuous motion force events in a driven 2D granular array

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Contact Info

Office/Lab Phone: 207.780.4158

Email

pauln at maine dot edu

Department of Physics

Portland, Maine 04104