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  Session: Labs and Apparatus Posters
  Paper Type: Poster
  Title: The Magnetopause: Bringing Space Physics Into a Junior Lab*
  Meeting: 2014 Summer Meeting: Minneapolis, Minnesota
  Location: N/A
  Date:
  Time: 8:30PM
  Author: Jim Crumley
College of St. Benedict / St. John's University
320 363-3183, jcrumley@csbsju.edu
  Co-Author(s): Ari Palczewski, Stephen Kaster
  Abstract: Undergraduate students often have minimal exposure to many subfields of physics which are active areas of research. Space physics is an area that is particularly difficult to expose students to since it builds off of another area that most undergraduates see little of, plasma physics. The magnetopause is a convenient entry point into space physics, since it can be modeled as a pressure balance, which is a concept familiar from introductory physics. We use the Earth's magnetopause as the basis for a lab for junior physics majors. In the lab students analyze results from a NASA MHD simulation(1) and data from several spacecraft. In this lab, not only are students exposed to space physics, but they also develop their data analysis skills.
  Footnotes: *This research was supported by an award from Research Corporation.
1 Simulation results have been provided by the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov) at Goddard Space Flight Center through their public Runs on Request system.
  Presentation: Crumley-mpx_lab_poster.pdf

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