Meeting Briefs

Spring Section Meetings

The APS Texas Section held its annual spring meeting March 3-5, 2005, at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, in conjunction with the corresponding sections of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the Society of Physics Students (SPS). The meeting featured general sessions on frontier physics, with special consideration given to the World Year of Physics. The three Einstein-related plenary talks focused on Einstein's contributions to quantum mechanics, his contributions to cosmology, and his ethics. Friday evening's banquet speaker was Curtis Bradley, who discussed intriguing connections between Einstein and the painter Pablo Picasso.

The APS New England Section held its annual spring meeting April 1-2, 2005, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. In keeping with the World Year of Physics celebration, the overall theme for the conference was Einstein, including lectures on Brownian motion in E. coli, Bose- Einstein condensates, detecting gravitational waves, testing E=mc², GPS measurements, and studying Einstein's manuscripts. Friday evening's banquet speaker was Harvard University's Peter Galison, author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps.

Finally, the APS Ohio Section is holding its annual spring meeting April 8-9, 2005, at the University of Dayton in Ohio. The meeting, co-hosted by the Air Force Institute of Dayton and the University of Dayton, is organized around the theme of nanophotonics. Four invited talks focus on photonic crystal fibers; nanofabricated 3D photonic lattices; polymer photonic devices; and quantum control in atom optics. Friday evening features a special public lecture by David Reitze of the University of Florida on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in honor of the World Year of Physics. The meeting also features a free optics workshop for high school teachers.