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Physics Webmaster: Logan Hancock

March 30, 2009

Through his work on the “Physics to Go” Web site during a summer internship and later as an online consultant, ASU junior Logan Hancock has helped provide physics resources and education to a potentially international audience.

An applied physics major from Brownfield, Hancock originally came to ASU on a band scholarship, but it wasn’t long before his love of physics took precedence over his love of music.

“Not being a music major, it was difficult trying to shuffle my classes,” Hancock said.  “I had a couple of conflicts with band and physics classes at the same time and, I hate to say it, but physics was more important.  It was hard to give up the band, but I guess it has worked out.”

While he no longer has his band scholarship, Hancock does receive a Carr Academic Scholarship and a Special Academic Scholarship from the ASU Physics Department.  He is also one of only about 40 students nationwide to receive a 2008-09 Columbia Crew Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship from the Texas Space Grant Consortium.

During the summer of 2008, Hancock earned an internship at the national office of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) in College Park, Md., where he worked for the American Physical Society.  The main focus of the internship was working on the Physics to Go Web site, which is a component of the ComPADRE online network of 11 educational resource collections.  The collections support teachers and students in physics and astronomy as part of the National Science Digital Library.

“It is mostly Web sites in the Physics to Go collection,” Hancock said.  “It is targeted toward the general public, so we feature eye-catching images and different activities that would be more beneficial to someone who doesn’t have a physics background.”

“Energy is one thing that a lot of people are searching online about right now,” he added.  “We have several articles on the site about energy, so if someone Googles ‘energy,’ Physics to Go will pop up and they can go to our Web site where there are resources for their benefit.”

Since the completion of his internship, Hancock has continued to work on the site as an online consultant.  He is charged with finding new resources for the site, providing written descriptions, adding them to the existing collection and updating the Physics to Go home page every two weeks.

As president of the Angelo State SPS chapter, Hancock is also involved in other activities like the spring “Peer Pressure” Road Show and the annual Can Roll holiday food drive in November.  He recently attended an American Physical Society Joint Texas Section meeting in El Paso and the 2008 Quadrennial Congress of the Sigma Pi Sigma national physics honor society at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago.

Scheduled to graduate in May 2010, Hancock was initially interested in ASU’s “three-two” program that would have provided him with a Texas A&M engineering degree on his way to becoming a civil engineer.  But, he has enjoyed the hands-on physics education at ASU so much, he has decided to finish his applied physics degree here.

“I think civil engineering is still probably my plan,” Hancock said.  “But, I’ve also been thinking a lot about going into physics education, so it is still kind of up in the air.”

If you want some physics education from Hancock right now, visit the Physics to Go Web site.