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Gauging What Students Understand -- In Class, at American Association of Physics Teachers Winter Meeting (New Orleans, LA), Monday, January 5, 1998
In Peer Instruction, the instructor of a large lecture class periodically poses questions to the students; the students think about these questions individually and then discuss them in small groups. A student described this method as ""turning a large lecture into a seminar."" For Peer Instruction to be successful, the instructor needs a way to gauge the students' understanding of a particular question. Instructors around the country have used a show of hands, flash cards, and electronic techniques to learn students¹ answers. We will present our latest findings on the implementation of Peer... Read more about Gauging What Students Understand -- In Class
Laser induced microexplosions in transparent materials, at CLEO/QELS '97 (Baltimore, MD), Friday, May 23, 1997
We recently discovered that 200-nm diameter structures can be created inside transparent materials by ultrafast-laser driven microexplosions. Applications include high-density 3-D data storage, fabrication of 3-D optical elements, and novel materials processing. We present the results of optical and structural examinations and discuss the physical processes involved.
Surface femtochemistry: Elucidating reaction pathways, at Ultrafast Surface Dynamics Workshop (Ascona, Switzerland), Wednesday, March 5, 1997:
talk_223.pdf

We studied the desorption of O2 and production of CO2 induced by intense femtosecond laser pulses incident on a Pt(111) surface prepared with coadsorbed CO and O2 at 90 K. The reaction pathway with femtosecond laser pulses is very different from that with nanosecond or contineous wave irradiation [1,2]. Our experiments address both the excitation mechanism as well as the chemical pathway leading to O2 desorption and CO2...

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Ultrafast laser-induced structural and electronic changes in solids, at PIERS 1997 (Hong Kong), Tuesday, January 7, 1997:
talk_210.pdf
For over two decades the subject of laser-induced phase transitions in semiconductors has generated considerable interest. This interest is due to the technological importancee of semiconductors and the research in this field was in part driven by the hope of developing better methods for the annealing of ion-implated semiconductors. More recently, femtosecond laser pulses have made it possible to study highly non-equilibrium electron and lattice dynamics in seminconductors. In this talk we first present an overview of work on laser-induced structural and electronic changes in solids, and... Read more about Ultrafast laser-induced structural and electronic changes in solids

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