Two student teams from the Department of Physics ranked at the level of Bronze Medal during the fifth annual University Physics Competition Nov. 14-16.
The competition is an international contest for undergraduate students, who work in three-member teams. They spend 48 hours analyzing a real-world scenario using the principles of physics, and writing a formal paper describing their work. In this year's competition, 131 teams submitted papers for judging.
One NDSU team, consisting of Austin Usselman, Joseph Roth and Tyler Antony, investigated the problem of circumbinary planets. The problem posed this situation: "Consider two stars, one with 50 percent of the mass of our sun and one equal in mass to our sun. This binary star system has an orbital period of 30 Earth days. Where could a planet have a stable orbit in this system? Describe the possible stable planetary orbits."
The other NDSU team, with members Wei Kang Lim, Mitchell Zubich and Lane Morrison, studied this problem: "A water fountain located at the middle of a circular pond ejects water straight up, and the water spreads out into a cone shape with the axis of the cone being vertical. As the water moves, its molecules collide with each other. Determine the probability that any molecule of the ejected water hits the pond at the point (x, y). Assume that the fountain¹s ejection point is at (0, 0). From your model, determine the most probable place where the water lands and also the median circle, that is, that circle around the fountain inside which exactly half of the water lands."
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