For Immediate Release: November 22, 2002
Contact: Tom Krattenmaker
610-328-8534
tkratte1@swarthmore.edu
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/
Swarthmore College senior Matthew Landreman, son of Mary and Urban Landreman of St. Paul, Minn., is just one of four students from around the country to receive the award for best undergraduate student poster presentation from the American Physical Society's division of plasma physics. Landreman received the award last week at the group's annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., for his presentation, "Fully 3-D Measurement of Reconnecting Magnetic Field Structure in SSX."
SSX stands for "Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment." Landreman's research concerns a process called "magnetic reconnection" that occurs in plasmas. Reconnection, which converts magnetic energy into heat and high-energy particles, has been used to explain the surprising fact that the solar atmosphere is 1,000 times hotter than its surface. Landreman's primary achievement, as reported in his poster, is the first three-dimensional measurement of a magnetic field inside a plasma during a single shot, as opposed to an average between many shots.
Landreman, an Honors physics major with a minor in mathematics, worked closely on his research with Swarthmore College Associate Professor of Physics Michael Brown, an authority on experimental plasma physics. Landreman is a 1998 graduate of Central High School in St. Paul.
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