Physics department notes (from Facebook)

Here’s a list of informational posts and local ephemera from the Physics Department’s Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/PhysicsWSU/.
This is not official Winona State University communication, just a mirror of what shows up at that site.

2026-November-7

Happy Lise Meitner Day Everyone! From one of our Winona Students: “I believe Lise Meitner should have a national holiday. First off, she didn’t get a Nobel Prize even though she contributed so much work into the discovery of nuclear fission and it was only awarded to Otto Hahn who helped her. She also help discover protactinium and independently discovered the Auger effect and yet still no Nobel Prize. She did get an element named after her (Element 109 – Meitnerium) but I feel like people don’t always care about the name of the element and more about what it does and just trying to survive chemistry class. Some suggested days could be, November 7th - Her birthday. November 20th – The day she submitted her thesis. February 1st – Day she was awarded her doctorate.”

I agree. Meitner was nominated for the Nobel prize in Physics or Chemistry 49 times!!!

2026-November-2

The biannual clock shift is upon us once again. My backyard weather monitor even noticed!

2026-November-1

Want a light-weight battery for your fish finder? A little bit of electronics, soldering, and voltage regulator/buck-boost knowledge is all you need to rig a USB charger up to provide the power to get out one the ice with your flasher. Of course, this depends on Lake Winona (right next to campus and full of hungry sunfish) freezing over pretty soon!

2026-October-31

For Halloween this year Professor Moore’s car is dressing up as a bikerack. One day I got curious about the best way to carry 4-5 bikes on a car (I have 4 kids). Using the instant gas mileage gauge on the car, I could definitely tell the difference between 2 bikes on top vs all of the bikes on the hitch rack.

Winona County has some of the best gravel biking in the state. Greg Lemond (ask your parents) used to come down to Winona to train on Garvin Heights road, which runs up the bluff just a mile from campus.

2026-October-30

Amazing fact of the day - there’s a story behind the strange “penny” sizing system that nail companies use for nail sizing. The thickness of the material your nailing through, measured in penny thicknesses (1/8”=3mm), determines the “penny size” of the nail you should use.

2026-October-29

Here’s a very red sunrise over Lake Superior. The red haze comes from wildfire smoke. The sun takes up about 0.52 degrees of the horizon. If you look at the picture, you might believe that the sun is about “3 suns” above the horizon. You can measure stuff like this with ImageJ. I did that and saw that in this picture, the sun is about 229 pixels in size, and the bottom of the sun is about 645 pixels above the Lake Superior horizon. So, if each sun diameter is 0.52 degrees, this means the sun is (645/229)0.52 = 1.46 degrees above the horizon. The sun moves 360 degrees through the sky each day, which means this picture was taken (1.46/360)24hrs = 0.097 hours = 5.8 minutes after sunrise. If you like nerding out over photo measurements, you’ll like our department!
Here’s a web version of ImageJ https://ij.imjoy.io

2026-October-28

The car is a 2013 Prius, about 4.46m in length. Henry, son of one of the Physics professors is about 1.83m tall. However, the car is further in the background than Henry. How much further behind Henry is the car? If you can measure their sizes in pixels, you can figure out the answer with triangles.

Q: Also, what are they doing? A: Getting ready to canoe in one of the amazing river backwaters near campus. The local manufacturer isn’t called “Wenonah Canoe” for no reason!

Using ImageJ, Henry is about 460 pixels tall, and the silver Prius is 734 pixels wide..

2026-October-27

Best dog ad ever. Reminds me a little bit about the naming scheme of some of the rarer elements in the periodic table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkelium

2026-October-26

Physics in the wild! Bears love the food that campers bring to the BWCA. What strength rope and what strength carabiner should you use if this is the rig you use to hoist your 100lbs of bagels, coffee and peanut butter? How hard will you need to pull on the light colored rope on the left side of the picture?

2026-October-25

Here are the cheapest 2x4’s at my local lumberyard - typically at least $1 less per board because they’re warped or checked. Knowing the required tolerances in a backyard project is a nice thing. Does it matter if the 2x4 you’re using for a canoe rack is 1/2” out of true? Nope, the canoe won’t care and spending less money is fun. A substantial part of any Engineering design is using fewer, cheaper, or “lower quality” materials to meet a specification. If you meet the specification a lower cost, you can use less material, and sell the product for a more affordable price. Engineering design is fun!

2026-October-23

Here’s a keyless entry pad I saw once at a little league game.
I wonder if the engineers at Ford know that finger sweat+oil degrades the printing on their rubber pads?
Figuring out this car’s secret entry code seems easier than it should be.

2026-October-22

Winona State runs a pair of Purple Air PM 2.5 air quality sensors.
Smoke of particle size 2.5um and smaller is especially dangerous!
Here’s a letter to the editor that one of the department professors wrote a few summers ago.
https://ntmoore.github.io/notes/strib_PM2.5.html The sensor data is published online at https://map.purpleair.com/air-quality-standards-us-epa-aqi?opt=%2F1%2Flp%2Fa10%2Fp604800%2FcC0#10.83/44.0626/-91.6431 This summer we had to trouble-shoot bad readings from one of the sensors - A bug had decided to make a home in one of them!

2026-Octover-21

Winona County is a great place to bicycle when you need a study break!
Here’s a beautiful limestone outcrop about 8 miles from campus. If you want to visit in-person, try the lat, long pair: 43°59’51.2”N 91°44’32.8”W

2026-October-20

Cool fact of the day: A 9v battery is 6x 1.5v batteries, wired up “head to tail”.
If you have a wire cutter and a dead 9v, this is pretty easy to see for yourself!
Is a 9v just 6x AAA’s?
Nope, I think they’re actually made from 4A or AAAA batteries!

2026-October-20

Summer Memories: in June at around the time of summer registration, the Saskatoons aka Serviceberries aka Shadbush aka Juneberries are ripe outside of the Physics and Geoscience Professors’ office windows.
Why so many different names? The berries are so common in Saskatchewan that they named a town after them, or, the berries flower when Shad run up the rivers in the North-east US, or, the fruit is ready in June, or, the plants flower at about the time the ground thaws enough to have funeral services for all the people who died over the winter! Yikes!, but then again, maybe it is fun to know all of the different names for a plant that’s all over the northern US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelanchier

##2026-October-19 A postcard sent to a prospective student, and a reminder that in Minnesota you can vote early for any reason. In person early voting can be done at the Winona county government building or on campus on Friday October 29. Full details at the Minnesota Secretary of State office, https://www.sos.mn.gov/elections-voting/other-ways-to-vote/vote-early-in-person

2026-October-19

What’s the hardest thing about teaching this fall? Probably the “Homework Machine”.

2026-October-17

Unbelievable and amazing fact of the day. Each section of lichen growing on this rock is a hardy civilization of fungi and algae cells. Lichen “eats” rock, and is so hardy that small colonies have been found growing on the OUTSIDE of the International Space Station!

2026-October-17

It’s “apply to college season” ya’ll. When you’re admitted to WSU, we’ll send you a post card to say hello!