Picture of Tom

Thomas J. Bauer

Laboratory Instructor



EDUCATION

B.A. in PHYSICS, Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN
M.S. in PHYSICS, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID

TEACHING

Currently I am teaching the labs for the Intro Physics series (PHYS107) and Modern Physic Physics (PHYS 202)

SCHEDULE

Click here for a Current Schedule
Office : Science Center Room E128 ( Just off the Mini-Focus)

INTERESTS

My greatest interest since coming to Wellesley has been improving the laboratory equipment to make greater use of computers. I've spent considerable time interfacing instruments in our Quantum Mechanics Laboratory to simplify data acquisition and analysis. I think that it is important that students see how computers can allow us to do experiments that were not possible (or extremely tediuous) just a few years ago.

I v'e written a control software package in Microsoft's Quick Basic that allows us to run a spectrometer, dye laser, lock-in amplifier, and diode laser together in our Quantum Mechanics Laboratory. In addition we can run the spectrometer in photon counting mode or lock-in amplifier mode.


Currently I am working with a 350 who is writing a spectrometer control program in LabView.

HISTORY

I started teaching at Wellesley in 1986. Before that I worked for Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson as an Electronic/Instrument engineer. In 1989-90 my family and I spent a sabbatical back at Steward Observatory's Mirror Lab where I worked on a camera to take pictures of glass melting in the labs 30-ton rotating oven.

In 1997-98 my family and I spent a sabatical year in Boulder, CO where I worked on a fiber-optic sensor for Hydrazine at a small chemical engineering company.