Two undergraduate physics students are taking science beyond the classroom with research seeking to explain atom movement in crystals as they grow.
Sophomore Michael Christiansen and junior Nick Jungwirth are working with physics professor Jeff Drucker using grant money from NASA and the National Science Foundation.
In May, Drucker applied as a mentor for NASA grant money for graduate and undergraduate students to do science research. In August, NASA funded research about nanocrystals — long, thin crystals that self-assemble — and Christiansen came on board as an intern.
Along with Christiansen, there are 47 other ASU students doing research funded by NASA.
Jungwirth’s research is funded by a National Science Foundation grant through the federal government, which Drucker helped him obtain.
Christiansen and Jungwirth spend at least 15 to 20 hours a week in a research lab trying to understand how atoms rearrange and move when crystals grow.
Since August, the pair has been building a vacuum chamber for their research.
“Designing the experimental apparatus has been what we’ve been focused on,” Christiansen said.
Christiansen said he has been interested in science since he started collecting fossils in grade school. Throughout his junior and senior years of high school, he started volunteering at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science teaching kindergarten and first graders.
Christiansen’s love for paleontology grew when he found an opportunity to go to the Wind River Basin in Wyoming to collect fossils to add to the Denver museum.
During ASU’s summer and winter breaks, he still spends his time going out into the field to dig up fossils.
When Christiansen first came to ASU, he took an honors physics course with Drucker, which led him to the research.
“I knew at that point that I wanted to get involved in research and was trying to figure out what it was going to be and who I was going to do it with,” he said.
Jungwirth also took Drucker’s physics course as a freshman and shared a similar interest in research. Before he joined Drucker’s research lab, he worked with TGen, the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona doing research on DNA and how it affects traits in diseases.
He joined Drucker’s lab group in summer 2008.
“I’ve always had a question of how things worked but never a formal understanding,” Jungwirth said about physics.
When he and Christiansen aren’t in the lab, they’re at home drawing what materials they need to build the chamber or searching for parts, Jungwirth said.
“They basically do all the work and I suggest directions that might be interesting and help guide them based off my experience,” Drucker said.
Once the chamber is finished, Christiansen and Jungwirth will focus on growing gold and indium dots and nanowires to continue the research.
This will allow them to design materials for the next generation of electronic and information-processing technologies like computers, Drucker said.
After graduating, Christiansen said he wants to work for the National Renewable Energy Lab run by the U.S. Department of Energy, while Jungwirth said he wants to get his doctorate, become a teacher and start his own research group.
The two undergraduates are working on publishing their research in a scientific journal, hopefully The Journal of Applied Sciences, they said.
“More undergraduates should get involved in research,” Drucker said. “Whatever they find most interesting.”
Reach the reporter at mpareval@asu.edu
