I also teach in Middlebury's Environmental Studies Program.
Prof. Richard Wolfson
Department of Physics
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
Phone: (802) 443-5427
Fax: (802) 443-2072
email: wolfson@middlebury.edu
For more details, see my vitae.
I enjoy teaching science at all levels, to both science students and nonscientists. My teaching reaches beyond Middlebury's classrooms, through my introductory physics textbook, Physics for Scientists and Engineers (available in Italian, too), my book Nuclear Choices: A Citizen's Guide to Nuclear Technology, and videotaped courses done for The Teaching Company.
My current research involves the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona. I'm trying to understand the origin of coronal mass ejections--huge outbursts that eject trillions of kilograms of solar material into space, at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second, and sometimes in Earth's direction. Images showing a coronal mass ejection are available from the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Shown below is the result of a theoretical calculation, published recently in the Astrophysical Journal with several Middlebury undergraduates, showing the predicted evolution of the Sun's magnetic field that results from the fact that the Sun rotates more rapidly at the equator than at the poles:
Click for a movie of this evolution.
More on this to come!
