Category Archives: research

Fast Quantum Tunneling Method

Posted on August 15, 2020 by Andy Rundquist

This post describes a way to calculate tunneling probabilities for one dimensional quantum barriers. This method is easy to code up, and is very fast. Consider the following barrier. If your energy is less than 3 eV, you’ll just reflect … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematica, physics, research, teaching | Leave a comment

One die to rule them all

Posted on January 16, 2020 by Andy Rundquist

For a number of years I’ve been working on finding ways to turn what looks like an unfair die to a fair one (see these posts). Recently I’ve made a lot of progress. This post shows how I’ve turned a … Continue reading →

Posted in fun, mathematica, physics, research | 4 Comments

Research introduction for students

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Andy Rundquist

This summer I’m developing a fully-online course for transfer students to help them hit the ground running in our program (this is part of an entirely online program currently for psychology and business majors). The learning outcomes for the course … Continue reading →

Posted in dean, research, teaching | 2 Comments

Helicopter vs snowplow

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Andy Rundquist

Working in the dean’s office has given me all sorts of new respect for the Dean of Students office. Specifically, I’ve been very impressed at how they leverage students’ parents when helping the students get through tough times. My experience … Continue reading →

Posted in dean, research, teaching | 4 Comments

Harmonic drums neural network

Posted on September 30, 2017 by Andy Rundquist

I’ve written before about my research group’s efforts at trying to find harmonic drums. One of those students wants to continue that work as a independent study so I’ve been putting some more thought into it. This post is about … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematica, programming, research | 2 Comments

Help us crowd-source our drums!

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Andy Rundquist

My students have been working hard this summer on a project I’ve talked about before. Here’s the gist: Normal drums aren’t melodic. They have resonant frequencies but they aren’t in a pattern that we think sounds good. That’s why they’re … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematica, physics, research, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Group digital lab books

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Andy Rundquist

Last summer I bought a LiveScribe Sky pen for my lab group, with the hope that we’d connect it to a group Evernote account that we’d use as a group lab notebook. Unfortunately, it didn’t work very well. The Evernote … Continue reading →

Posted in lab, research | 2 Comments

Teaching article reading

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Andy Rundquist

Today my research students and I did a fun activity. We’ve found several papers that are connected to the work we’re doing, and I wanted to sit with my students to pore over them to see where the gaps were … Continue reading →

Posted in research, teaching, twitter | 11 Comments

Summer project: more twirling chains

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Andy Rundquist

There are three main origins of this post: I really like playing with twirling chains. Yet another example of how mixing analytical and numeric approaches in Mathematica can be cool. This seems like a cool distributed project for next summer. … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematica, physics, research | 7 Comments