Lab Tours
Our lab offers tours to a broad range of audiences: middle school girls, high school groups, undergraduate clubs, prospective graduation students, visiting faculty, visiting families of faculty and staff, visiting government staff, fire safety personnel, and science journalists. We enjoy sharing the behind-the-scenes of our science projects. If interested in a lab tour, contact us!
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Maryland Day 2016
For Maryland Day 2016, we continued the tradition started in 2008 with our vortex cannons.
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Tony Richards Photos
Tony Richards is the University of Maryland School of Business resident photographer. He is currently working on a personal project that highlights the interesting people of UMD in their labs, facilities and theaters among other unique places on campus. With our visually striking and dynamic experiments, the Lathrop lab decided to participate in this project.
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Maryland Day 2015
Started in 2008, our yearly attendance at Maryland Day is still going strong in 2015. Our vortex cannons continue to be a hit with community members of all ages, especially with kids! These vortex cannons help visualize many of the principles at work in our studies of superfulid vortices.
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GRAD-MAP 2015
As part of GRAD-MAP’s Winter Workshop (January 2015), high school student Kristy Cortez did an experiment in our lab with grad student Peter Megson as her mentor.
Kristy worked on a project that models the electrical charging of particles (for example, sand grains), which could help us explain how lightning arises in sand storms, snowstorms, and volcanic ash cloud eruptions. The apparatus is a large cylinder filled with styrofoam particles. A a fan at the bottom causes the particles to move, collide, and charge.
She obtained time-lapse images and video of the apparatus in motion. Later, she analyzed the images and video and presented her results to her GRAD-MAP Winter Workshop peers.
GRAD-MAP aims to expose students in underrepresented groups to the world of grad school and academic research through interaction with faculty and graduate students, hands-on research experiences, and seminars. For more info on GRAD-MAP go here.
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Maryland Day 2008
Fun with fluids at Maryland Day 2008! We built two large vortex cannons, ordered some theatrical smoke machines, and set it all up in the sun for a few thousand of our closest friends. Smoke rings rolled across the Physics Building lawn and a good time was had by all. And don't forget the science: these vortex cannons demonstrate many of the principles at work in our studies of superfluid vortices.
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