John Colton's blog

Whew. It was an extremely busy three weeks of running experiments from Jan 2 to the end of last week. Pauline & kids didn't see much of me at all.

But we had some success! A student, Lee Wienkes, and I had designed a "microwave resonant cavity" which we were testing out. The resonant cavity is a small metal cylinder that amplifies the electric/magnetic fields when you shine light at it with a certain frequency, in much the same way that a bell will amplify a sound wave if you give it the right audio frequency corresponding to the bell's natural tone.

With a lot of serious delays/equipment problems/last minute equipment-control programming/etc, we emerged triumphant! Here is our glorious magnetic resonance signal, from a well-studied indium phosphine sample, doped with zinc impurities.



We chose a well-studied sample so that the testing of the cavity would be easier; now we can move on to samples that are more unique.

And now it's on to the semester. I'm teaching the following:
* Electrodynamics
* First year physics lab
* Circuits, with accompanying lab
* a "Capstone course" for graduating seniors

I've taught them all before, except the capstone course, but it is a bit hard having so many different classes, as opposed to multiple sections of the same class. We'll see how things go.

Hopefully now I can go back to a more frequent blog updating schedule.

Emily lost her first tooth today! (naturally, as opposed to knocked out) Just happened a few minutes ago, right before bedtime.

In other news, I've been having some substantial crises in my lab this week, and have spent most of the last two and a half days trying to get stuff together that people had promised would be shipped but then cancelled. I think I've got everything worked out, after a couple of days living on the phone.

I was recently having a "discussion" about the authenticity of the Book of Mormon on a message board. Another participant posted this link to an Orson Scott Card essay on the topic, which I thought was very interesting. I think I had read it before, a few years ago, because some of the points were familiar.

http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-bookofmormon.html

Basically, it's Card's professional point of view (as an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer) that the Book of Mormon could not have been the product of an 1820's fiction writer.

I had a fun but short trip to Utah in honor of my dad's 70th birthday. Among other things, the "original five Coltons" (my mom & dad plus three kids) spent a couple days by ourselves. We went snowmobiling and tubing.

Marci and John

Nancy and John

The five Coltons during a snowmobile break

The five Coltons tubing