The bracelet contains 9 charms: Runner-up “E-Days” Queen, 1964; Colorado Engineer Editor; Tau Beta Pi Badge; Mortar board Chi Epsilon, Civil Engineering Honorary [belonged to her former husband Robert Joselyn (CivEngr’65; MBA’67; PhDBus’71)]; Who’s Who, Students in American Universities and Colleges; Sigma Tau, Engineering Honorary; Colorado Engineer, Book Review Editor; Sigma Epsilon Sigma, Physics Honorary

In the mid-1960s, charm bracelets were a woman’s fashion staple. 

“We all had them,” said astrogeophysicist Jo Ann Cram Joselyn (ApMath’65; MAstro’67; PhD’78), who donated her bracelet to the CU Heritage Center in 1995. “Some people got really fancy with teddy bears and stuff like that. When you went on a trip, you’d buy a charm …  memento things.” 

Joselyn’s bracelet told her CU undergraduate story. She lived in the Sewall Hall women’s dorm for all four years. She has charms that signify her experience as runner-up Queen at E-Days [Engineering Days] as well as her engineering and physics honors status. Her favorite charm — a 1965 Tau Beta Pi women’s badge — granted her partial recognition in the engineering honor society. Women weren’t allowed full membership until 1969.

“When I put that bracelet on, I would feel appreciated,” she said. 

Joselyn went on to have an extraordinary career. She became CU’s first woman to receive a PhD in astrophysics. She worked as a space scientist and space weather forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for more than three decades, and then served as the secretary general for the and the s. in 2002. 

“I’ve had a fun life,” she said. 

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Photo by Mona Lambrecht 

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Ancient Elephant Bone Tools 

CU researchers surveyed the highest number of flanked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids ever discovered.

400,000

Years ago humans produced sophisticated tools from bones near Rome, Italy

13 ft.

Height of the straight-tusked elephants whose bones made the tools

98

Tools identified

1

Smoothing tool found that wouldn’t become common until 100,000 years later

1979–1991

Years the site, Castel di Guido, was excavated

2021

The team’s findings were published in the journal Plos One

Alum Wins Breakthrough Prize

JILA physicist Jun Ye (PhDPhys’97) was awarded the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for his groundbreaking atomic clock research. The optical lattice clock he designed enables precision tests of the laws of nature. His clocks are so precise, they would not gain or lose a second in about 15 billion years. Ye has worked at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and CU Boulder, for more than two decades. 

Theatre Program Receives Record-Breaking Gift 

Roe Green (Comm, Thtr’70) gave $5 million to CU Boulder’s theatre program, the largest ever for the Department of Theatre & Dance. The gift will fund an acoustic upgrade for the University Theatre, establish endowed funds for student scholarships and fund events designed to further students’ careers. In recognition of the donation, CU will change the name of University Theatre to the Roe Green Theatre, which is expected to reopen after renovations in fall 2023. 

Fish Fins Inspire New Designs

The long, thin bones in fish fins contain segmented hinges that enable the fins to be flexible and strong. CU Boulder mechanical engineering professor Francois Barthelat and his team are studying the little-researched mechanical benefits of this segmented structure, with the hope that similarly modeled designs could aid in better underwater propulsion systems, new robotic materials and aircraft  design. 

Heard Around Campus 

 

When people ask you, ‘Why do you like horror?’…they phrase that really carefully. … What they really mean is, ‘Why are you such a weirdo?’”

 

— CU Boulder English professor of distinction Steven Graham Jones in a CU Boulder Today interview talking about his new horror novel My Heart is a Chainsaw, published by Simon & Schuster.

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Photos courtesy CU Boulder 

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At 14,001 feet, Colorado’s Sunshine Peak is barely a “14er” — and might not be one for long. The status of Huron Peak, 14,003 feet, is also in jeopardy.

In fact, all of Colorado is expected to lose about two feet of elevation. Seattle will lose three feet. Florida will stay about the same.

Blame it all on better science.

For the last five years, U.S. government scientists have been redefining elevation — height above an agreed upon reference point — using a new method that involves satellites and airborne gravity-measuring machines to determine a new baseline for measuring the heights of landmasses. Basically, they’re establishing a new “zero.”

The new method can survey the entire continent quickly and keep up to date as Earth morphs. 

Once complete, in 2022, the decade-long project will provide the most precise measurements ever.

The revised elevation data will help organizations like FEMA determine more exact U.S. flood plains, for example, according to Derek van Westrum (PhDPhys’98), a scientist with NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS), which sets federal standards for surveying and mapping activities. The updates will aid land surveyors, oceanographers and geographers also. 

“Measurement uncertainties will be within centimeters now instead of feet,” said van Westrum, who works for NOAA in Boulder and is responsible for the survey’s terrestrial gravity measurements. “In Seattle right now, if you wade into the ocean, the current height system will indicate you’re about three feet above sea level.”

NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Current official elevations date from the 1980s.

The new measurement system is a far cry from the old way of doing things: For hundreds of years, terrestrial elevations were measured by hand from sea level using rulers, levels and brass markers.

While largely accurate when done correctly, this method is extremely tedious and costly, said van Westrum. And in places like Colorado, rugged terrain and extreme distance above sea level make it difficult to precisely measure. In Alaska, it’s nearly impossible. It’s an easier task in flat, seaside states like Florida.

“The new system can cover the entire continent quickly, and also keep it up to date as the Earth slowly changes, something you can't easily do with an army of folks with rulers,” van Westrum said.

The new survey method also improves upon GPS-based elevation mapping, which assumes a simple ellipsoid model of Earth. In contrast, the new method accounts for the complex and evolving shape of the planet.

“People know the Earth is round, but because it’s spinning, it kind of blobs out into an ellipsoid,” van Westrum said. “And with mountains and valleys and things like that, we know the Earth isn’t a perfect ellipsoid. It looks more like a lumpy potato.”

Scientists on the project, called GRAV-D, short for Gravity for the Redefinition of the American Vertical Datum, measure gravity’s pull near the Earth’s surface. They use the data to create a model of Earth’s geoid — a mathematically derived approximation of global mean sea level.

Measuring distance from this global mean to the top of landmasses will yield new, highly accurate elevations.

In order to map Earth’s lumpy potato shape, NGS uses gravity meters developed by Tim Niebauer’s (PhDPhys’87) company, Micro-g LaCoste in Lafayette, Colo., in addition to NASA satellites that collect gravity-related data.

Niebauer’s machines, which range in size from small toasters to barrels, use mirrors and lasers to measure gravity, said van Westrum, a self-described “gravity guy” who worked at Niebauer’s company for 15 years before joining the NOAA survey. Scientists deploy the machines on slow-moving GRAV-D aircraft and on the ground.

“You’re getting a picture of the Earth from outside of the Earth,” said Niebauer, who commercialized his gravity meters after perfecting them at CU’s JILA, a joint institute of the university and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The team uses ground-based and airborne machines to measure gravity’s pull near the Earth's surface.

To ensure that GRAV-D is as precise as possible, survey scientists have undertaken parallel projects across the U.S. using both old and new measurement systems and comparing results. Van Westrum led a Colorado project that measured elevations between Durango and Walsenburg, for instance. Initial data shows similar results from the two methods.

GRAV-D still has five years to go before it becomes the new standard for measuring elevation. Once it’s in effect, in 2022, a NOAA team will continually monitor agents of geologic change — such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and the movement of tectonic plates — all of which influence Earth’s dynamic shape. As the shape changes, so will global mean sea level and the elevations of landforms.

“You’ll be able to go anywhere with a GPS and know exactly where you are, latitude, longitude and how far above the surface of the geoid you are,” said van Westrum.

While it’s possible that some places could gain elevation, in general they’ll lose it, van Westrum said — imperiling Colorado’s shortest 14ers. Like poor Sunshine Peak.
 

Opening illustration by Tim O'Brien
Photo by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
Illustrations by NASA/JPL/University of Texas Center for Space Research

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When James Bond needs a new gizmo to carry out acts of spymaster derring-do, he heads straight for Q. CU scientists have a gadget team of their own.

To the physicists and chemists of CU-Boulder, Hans Green (Hist’95) and the JILA team say this: If you conceive it, we will build it.

James Bond has Q, the irascible tinkerer extraordinaire of the British Secret Service; CU-Boulder scientists have an entire squad of gadgetry wizards at the JILA Instrument Shop, which designs and manufactures custom equipment for work at the leading edge of physical science — stuff researchers need for their experiments but can’t buy anywhere.

From atom-capturing vacuum chambers to anodized aluminum tubes to precision optics, the shop’s six full-time instrument makers create devices that may exist only in researchers’ imaginations.

“Our main goal is to help get science out the door,” says Green as he demonstrates an electromagnetic coil in progress for JILA chair Deborah Jin’s research group. (JILA is a joint physics research institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST.)

Trim and fit in his late forties with spiffy safety goggles ever-present around his neck, the enthusiastic Green has worked as a machinist in the shop for more than 22 years and serves as its unofficial outreach liaison and tour guide. He’s been around long enough to play a role in many of the shop’s greatest successes, including an atom-cooling chamber that helped net a Nobel Prize in physics for JILA fellows Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 2001, as well as parts of the custom mirror mount that helped Jan Hall win the prize in 2005.

“For decades JILA has been a prolific and successful physics research institute,” says Green, “and I believe that success comes from a culture of cooperation and excellence.”

Located on JILA’s ground floor, the Instrument Shop was founded in 1962 in collaboration with NIST. Inside the spacious shop, scientific innovation has a decidedly workman-like feel. Wires cover the walls and floors like the roots of an overgrown oak. Hulking drill presses dating to the Johnson administration gleam with fresh metallic shavings atop a thick coat of sawdust. From open toolboxes spill a splendor of curiosities: Lenses and scalpels, welding torches and ruby ball bearings, electromagnets and an impossibly heavy, fist-sized hunk of tungsten. There’s a veritable menagerie of microscopes.

The mad-scientist clutter belies the extraordinary craftsmanship of Green, optics guru David Alchenberger, and their colleagues.

It's the job of the JILA Instrument Shop team to turn something imaginary into a working tool of science.

“The fact that our shops have been so consistently excellent, year in and year out, represents a major competitive advantage for JILA vis-à-vis other physics and chemistry departments around the country and around the world,” Nobel laureate Cornell once said, referring to the Instrument Shop and the nearby Keck Optical Measurement Lab. “The interaction between the scientists and the instrument makers is at a very high level.”

But for the Instrument Shop crew, little of it feels like work.

“The word I always return to is ‘fun,'” says Green, a history buff and mountain biker who began at the shop as an undergraduate apprentice.

He shows me his project for Deborah Jin. Thick copper tubing has been wound around two cylinders, resembling oversized spools of wool. The researchers will send hundreds of amps of electrical current surging through the coils to create a magnetic field, which in turn will generate a tiny cloud of atoms. Those atoms will be captured in a vacuum chamber, rocketed along a track to another apparatus, and cooled quickly to create a Bose-Einstein condensate, one of the coldest possible states of matter, just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero.

Hans Green has worked in JILA's Instrument Shop for 22 years, long enough to have helped CU scientists with projects that later led to Nobel Prizes.

It’s all a reminder that sophisticated scientific feats sometimes begin with simple bolts, pins, glass and metal.

Every nook and cranny of the spacious shop brims with garage-style improvisations. In one corner, methanol bubbles frantically in an elaborate, multi-tiered glass still; the shop goes through so much of the stuff that it now purifies its own. A collection of warped metals and oddly shaped pieces of ceramics — “happy accidents,” Green calls them — are kept on hand for future reference and possible inspiration

The shop wears its productive legacy on its dust-coated sleeve. Nothing much here is shiny or new. (For that, walk down the hall to JILA’s 56,000-square-foot “X-Wing,” a series of advanced laboratories that opened in 2012.) But the shop’s results can be beautiful and utterly unique.

We visit Kyle Thatcher (MechEngr’14), who’s working on a double-walled, temperature-controlled chamber that will house an extremely stable sapphire reflector optical device. He began working in the shop as an undergraduate and is now in a three-year apprenticeship.

“The opportunity to design something new and interesting every day, and then actually making it, is truly amazing,” he says, adding that he appreciates the shop’s unique hands-on approach to engineering apprenticeships.

The shop seems to operate on egalitarian principles that make the most of each instrument maker’s aptitude and interests. As researchers bring them assignments, the craftsmen divvy them up, leading to an ever-changing slate of projects on each person’s workbench. Everyone has a specialty — dies, maybe, or glass machining, or injection molds. They’re all skilled welders.

The nature of the work is always changing. If researchers come to us with a challenge, we'll figure it out.

The instrument makers, like Green and his white-haired mentor, Alchenberger, who’s been with JILA since 1992, are mostly old pros. But the shop hires a handful of student workers each year. Calvin Schwadron (Astro’16) is one of three now.

He’s been paying his dues by installing shelf units above some of the laser tables — and along the way, learning firsthand about the latest in advanced physics research and creative solutions for technical problems, “whether they end up being intricate and complex or painfully simple.”

Brave CU-Boulder researchers who prefer a DIY approach to equipment production have a place in the shop, too, and Green makes himself available for instruction in basic machinery principles and techniques.

“We try to ensure that it’s an easy place to get things done,” he says.

Our early fall tour ends with a bit of effortless magic.

Green fires up a high-powered torch and plucks out a chipped test tube from a nearby bin. As he holds the glass to the flame, it glows, then quivers. He blows on the pliant material to create a marble-sized bubble on one side, which instantly hardens to form a chamber that could, theoretically, be used to trap air, or smoke, or even atoms.

“The nature of the work is always changing,” he says, “and if researchers come to us with a challenge, we’ll figure it out.”

Hans Green works in the JILA machine shop.

Photography by Glenn Asakawa

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CU-Boulder’s first-of-its-kind supersonic unmanned aircraft is expected to fly faster and farther, using less fuel, than anything remotely similar to date. Rendering created by master’s degree student Greg Rancourt.

Sound travels at approximately 760 miles per hour. What can travel faster than that?

A supersonic unmanned aircraft designed by about 50 CU-Boulder students under the wings of CU-Boulder assistant professor and aerospace engineer Ryan Starkey. The aircraft is poised to break the world record for speed in its weight class since it will be capable of traveling at a speed of Mach 1.4. The speed of sound is Mach 1.

“The group of students working on this is very excited because we’re not just creeping into something with incremental change,” Starkey says. “We’re creeping in with monumental change and trying to shake up the ground.”

After three years of hard work, the actual building of the prototype and the application process for FAA approval to test the aircraft began this year. Falling under Starkey’s new business, Starkey Aerospace Corp., the aircraft will cost between $50,000 and $100,000. So far, it has captured the attention of the Army, Navy, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA.

Other CU-Boulder space projects include:

The inclusion of CU-designed instruments, a photopolarimeter and a radio astronomy instrument aboard Voyagers 1 and 2 in the solar system.

A team of 20 CU students and 16 professionals from CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics will control NASA’s Kepler mission to hunt down Earth-like rocky planets in other solar systems for another four years after receiving NASA approval.

Four facts about the unmanned aircraft

1. Will travel faster than the speed of sound
2. Measures 5 feet wide and 6 feet long
3. Could penetrate and analyze storms
4. Could be used for military reconnaissance missions

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Three students created this piece in which stage fog from a slot forms a ‘jelly roll’ in the air. A green laser sheet slices the roll. Andi Fabri (Art, Comm’00)

Department: Mechanical Engineering

Professor: Jean Hertzberg

Course description: Anybody who has paid attention to patterns formed while stirring milk into coffee has participated in flow visualization. It is the process of making the physics of fluid flows — gases and liquids — visible. Designed for engineering, fine arts photography and video students, the class explores techniques for creating images of fluid flows.

Course website:  www.colorado.edu/engineering/MCEN/flowvis

Video link: 

Abbreviated reading list:

Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide (Perigee/Penguin)

A.J. Smits and T.T. Lim’s Flow Visualization Techniques and Examples (Imperial College Press)

Hertzberg says: “Development of this course has been the most profound teaching experience of my career. For the first time, I found that my course had an impact; students came out with changed perceptions, really being able to ‘see’ the world around them in a
different way.”

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Julie Peasley and the Particle Zoo

Combine artistic creativity and a love of science, add a dollop of inspiration, season with whimsy and a sense of humor and you have Julie Peasley’s (Art’91) recipe for success in crafting a geek gift teaching tool — the Particle Zoo, her collection of toy subatomic particles.

Fascinated by astronomy and physics as a teenager, she wanted to major in physics but when she visited the Boulder campus, she recalls, “the art students looked like they were having a lot more fun, wearing funny clothes and funny hair.” She opted for art instead.

As a graphic designer in California, her physics fascination continued. She studied it “on the side” until one day a crafts fair rekindled her interest in creating hands-on art.

Her inspiration? Subatomic particles.

“They gave me full creative license since no one’s ever going to see these [subatomic particles],” she says.

Julie began by personifying a simple electron as a hand-sewn plush circle with a wide grin. “I didn’t know how to sew and had to teach myself and get a sewing machine.”

Her collection includes a rainbow of quarks, leptons, nucleons and force carriers.

The newest member— a big proton that unzips to reveal three miniquarks and a gluon — illustrates beta decay.

Each handmade creation comes with an informative tag that’s been carefully fact-checked by knowledgeable physicists. She enjoys transforming scientific concepts into art to make them understandable. Her website, for instance, displays the spectrum of subatomic particles, from the zero-mass tachion to heavy dark matter.

“No bad science!” Julie says. Keeping that vow has prompted a cadre of fans among particle physicists with a sense of humor.

Last July, a staffer from Switzerland-based CERN, the world’s largest particle physics lab, presented her particle toys to the Nobel physics laureates at the annual Nobel Prize-winners conference. The photos he sent are posted on her gallery at .

She gets lots of requests from museums and stores, but her home-based business is not set up for large orders. Serving as “zookeeper,” seamstress, conceptualizer, mail packager, proofreader, driver, e-mailer and web designer has become a full-time job that has taken over her Los Angeles apartment, she says.

Only recently has she mastered the art of basting in zippers.

“I still can’t do clothes,” she confesses. And, although she makes more than two dozen different particles, in sewing terms “they’re just pillows.”

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