A few of you remember having a great dinner catered by Moe's, followed by liquid Nitrogen ice cream and game show on Friday, November 11th, 2005. The occasion you may also remember was the 2005 SPS Zone meeting. Of 18 SPS zones, we are zone 6 comprised of colleges in Florida, the Carolinas, etc... It was great to meet fellow SPSers from other schools and to see what they do. It was especially great to learn of various research conducted by their members. Research was presented in two ways at the meeting: poster and oral presentations. The best presenters were eligible for the Marsh White award, which boasted a sum of $200. That got the presenters going!

Whatever the students' motivations, the quality of presentations was excellent. There were 10 presentations in a 2 hour span with 10 minutes per presentation and 2 minutes for questions. This time, the students presented and beckoned lots of questions from professors interested in finding out more. 2 minutes were not nearly enough for some presentations. The back of the room was in fact packed with people looking for part of a wall to lean against between talks.

Presentations spanned a wide range of topics. On the cosmic scale, there were efforts to measure the water content of Martian soil and intermediate efforts toward detecting gravity waves. On the molecular scale, there was a surprising number of talks in the field of biophysics. Biophysics topics dealt with tasks such as constructing layers of certain lipids in a specific configuration, or injecting mice with fluorescing inert particles known as "Quantum Dots" to image them. There was research on the atomic scale dealing with photo-detachment as well as research in good old condensed matter physics dealing with magnetism. There was even some research in classical mechanics: an effort to characterize the force distribution between two bonded objects under a certain loading. It was great to see theory presentation as it well illustrated that undergraduates can contribute effectively to ongoing theoretical research.

Some entertainment also came the listeners' way in addition to information. Presenters adorned their talks with bloopers they encountered during their experiments. We learned how injecting mice with quantum dots was a bit of a problem as the needle was slightly larger than the vein being injected. We were assured the mice experienced no trauma during this process however. There was also a story of a first time visit to the campus of Florida Gators, where a real live gator jumped out to extend its welcome during a promenade around lake Alice. Since all was fine, this presenter was especially thrilled to be presenting.

The talks were indeed a good experience. "The quality of presentations was so good, that we had to give 2 awards," said Yoonseok Lee, SPS advisor and one of the organizers of this meeting. Instead of one, two awards were given to oral presenters back at the NPB. Winners were presenters for determining water content of Martian soil, and for characterizing the force distribution on the surface of two bonded masses. The oral session was quite a success given the crowd that attended and how happily the number of awards was increased. Many thanks to the organizers, Yoonseok Lee, Robert Deserio, Cathy Yeh, and the SPS volunteers. Many thanks also to the judges of both sessions (Amlan Biswas, and Tarek Saab for the oral sessions).