By Chaim Roffman
On October 31, 2019, the Yeshiva University Physics Club held its first event. This has been a long time coming, and we are finally in a position to start hosting events where everyone can come together to share their love for and wonder of Physics. For the first event, we were fortunate to hear a talk given by Bar Aluf, a fourth-year Physics major. Aluf discussed how WiFi works and what obstacles engineers and scientists had to overcome in order to develop the versatile connection we enjoy today. Aluf is completing his major this year, and he managed to summarize a very complicated topic in a clear and concise talk. Afterwards, students were encouraged to ask questions regarding the talk, and the collective group delved deeper into a discussion as Aluf described the use of fractal antennas.
The YU Physics Club will soon be announcing its plans for future meetings and events, and hopefully for the next event we will be fortunate to be joined by students on the Beren Campus. The talks and events are not exclusive to Physics majors; anyone who enjoys the subject, or who is curious to learn how complicated systems and technologies are developed, is welcome to join the growing Physics Club community at YU.
We hope to have another talk at the end of November on a very hot topic: nuclear fusion. Since the 1950s, nuclear engineers have said that nuclear fusion is only 30 years away, and now we are rounding that corner. With the U.S. Navy submitting a patent for a new fusion reactor to replace the current fission reactors powering their massive submarines, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, from Britain, remarking that the engineers of the JET fusion research center at Culham in Oxfordshire, “[They] are on the verge of creating commercially viable miniature fusion reactors for sale around the world,” that timeline is much closer than some people think. Nuclear fission, in theory, provides a great amount of energy from a reactor and a handful of hydrogen isotopes. When energy sources evolve, everything evolves with it, so this development is sure to innovate transportation and space travel.
On behalf of the entire Physics Club, we thank Bar Aluf for taking the time to organize the event and to prepare his talk. Additionally, we thank everyone who showed up to this event. We hope to see more students coming to future events, sharing what subjects they like, and admiring cool technologies that are still being developed.