{"id":1267,"date":"2013-04-12T15:33:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T19:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=1267"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:58","slug":"giving-physics-a-good-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2013\/04\/giving-physics-a-good-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving Physics a Good Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jose Lopez does more than make advances in the newly emerging field of microplasmas, he makes a sometimes intimidating subject accessible for students.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a bolt of pure lightning that plays music in the basement of McNulty Hall.<\/p>\n

At least, it looks like lightning. It pulses, and music plays out of the thin air above it. Jose Lopez, the newest addition to Seton Hall\u2019s Department of Physics, shows visitors his plasma speaker with a smile. The 34-year-old assistant professor of physics likes a good attention-grabber.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn physics, we have very bad PR. We make it seem that it\u2019s not accessible,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In a field forever dominated by Albert Einstein\u2019s loopy personal style, Lopez is an unexpected twist on the age-old vision of a brainy physicist. The chatty Newark native is warm, amiable and plainspoken. And yet, one of the 20 biggest brains in the state, according to Inside Jersey magazine, is also an expert in a little-known, but potentially up-and-coming field of study called microplasmas.<\/p>\n

Lopez creates these tiny plasma reactions in order to assemble chemicals as if they were made of Lego blocks.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not as crazy as it sounds. Most people know there are three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. Each is defined by the density and arrangement of the atoms within it. Plasma is a fourth state that occurs when gases destabilize. That means their atoms break up into a mixture of charged ions and electrons.<\/p>\n

Once free, these ions and electrons can be recombined into something new. Lopez studies ways to control them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the whole thing,\u201d says Alfred Freilich, a longtime Lopez collaborator who joined Seton Hall with him in 2011 as a visiting research professor. It\u2019s hard to reliably control plasma. It\u2019s hot \u2014 the sun and stars are made of it. And atoms like stability. On Earth, they don\u2019t shift to plasma easily.<\/p>\n

Generally, a vacuum is needed to coax them. They shift to it more easily in miniature. At scales of a millimeter or less, chemical elements will become plasma in the open air and at a temperature cool enough to touch.<\/p>\n

As a result, there may be a lot of ways to put these tiny plasmas to work. Lopez and Freilich look for them.<\/p>\n

For instance, Degr\u00e9mont Technologies uses their research to increase the amount of oxygen it can turn into ozone inside of school bus-sized microplasma reactors. Municipalities and other groups buy the reactors so they can kill bacteria with ozone rather than chlorine at their water-treatment plants. The ozone is produced on-site because it breaks down soon after it\u2019s created.<\/p>\n

The oxygen alchemy is cool, but Lopez uses the reactors to connect more than just electrons and ions.<\/p>\n

He also uses them to connect with people. By forcing a lot of tiny oxygen plasmas to create ozone, the reactors remind people that physics doesn\u2019t just explain how the universe works. It also offers keys for controlling it.<\/p>\n

So, when Degr\u00e9mont asked for help on its microplasma reactors in 2005, Lopez opted to make the field a long-term focus. At the time, he was joining the physics faculty at his alma mater, Saint Peter\u2019s University in Jersey City, N.J.<\/p>\n

That found the newly minted academic looking for a way to connect with students directly.<\/p>\n

\"jose-lopez\"<\/a>Lopez already knew something about drawing students into science. Kurt Becker, his doctoral adviser at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., noticed that shortly after Lopez arrived in 2000. Becker often opened his lab to local high school and college students looking for hands-on research experience. They all flocked to Lopez.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was almost his natural instinct to take them under his wing,\u201d says Becker.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not surprising. By then, Lopez had been teaching science for years \u2014 he tutored the entire women\u2019s varsity basketball team in math and science while a sophomore at Saint Peter\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But he did learn some new tricks under Becker, now the associate provost for research and technology initiatives at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. Becker treated doctoral students like colleagues, not employees.<\/p>\n

He encouraged them to explore their own interests, and tried to get them whatever they needed to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone had a good idea, my attitude was: Go try it out,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Becker\u2019s stance had a long-term effect on Lopez. Nothing is out of reach. Last spring, he applied the theory to one of his first courses at Seton Hall. Rather than limiting his class on waves and oscillations to the university\u2019s labs, he added a set of online video lectures from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

The result really stood out to junior Stacie Ballou. The lectures gave her a first-hand look at the type of experiments normally confined to big research universities. \u201cIt was a different experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

For Lopez, that was the point. Students aren\u2019t unlike the chemicals he assembles in microplasma.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re ready to become something new \u2014 if you can connect with them.<\/p>\n

James Erik Abels, J.D. \u201903 is a New York City-based writer and the founder of an Internet software start-up.<\/cite><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jose Lopez does more than make advances in the newly emerging field of microplasmas, he makes a sometimes intimidating subject accessible for students.<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingGiving Physics a Good Name<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":1274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[39,27],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty","tag-science","tag-spring-2013","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4833,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/4833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}