Ijiri retrieves a hard drive from a nonfunctioning computer to use in the lab. PHOTOGRAPH BY LINDA GRASHOFF   New Instrument Will Help Oberlin Students Understand Data Storage and Other Modern Technologies By Betty Gabrielli
	Ijiri, principal investigator for the NSF grant, says she chose to become a physicist because she enjoys solving puzzles with mathematics. PHOTOGRAPH BY LINDA GRASHOFF		OCTOBER 13, 1999-- Starting next year, a select group of students will convene in a basement room in Wright Physics lab. Their task? To cut up small pieces of magnetic tape, floppy disks, and discarded hard drives. While the scene may sound like a cross between a secret spy mission and a kindergarten exercise, it is, in fact, step one in an exercise to learn how computers store data. The next step will be to use the lab's new $100,000 magnetometer to help understand the connection between computer materials and their function. As members of a no-prerequisites class called Deconstructing the Computer, the students will insert the small bits of magnetic material into the magnetometer and observe how the properties change in a magnetic field. The experiment parallels what happens in a computer as bits of magnetic material are read and written. The laboratory exercise will be one of many projects made feasible by a recent $75,880 Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement grant from the National Science Foundation to lead investigator Yumi Ijiri, assistant professor of physics, and co-investigators Sarah Stoll, assistant professor of chemistry, and John Scofield, associate professor of physics. Oberlin College is supplying matching funds. At the heart of the grant is funding for a state-of-the-art vibrating sample magnetometer that will arrive on campus in a few weeks. "Magnetic materials play an important role in computer data storage, recording devices, and other technologies," says Ijiri. "However, hands-on activities for this class of materials are a particular challenge: Without a modern magnetometer, many of the important features in magnetic media--such as how the reader head of a hard-disk drive responds to magnetized data--are too subtle to demonstrate." The equipment will allow students and faculty to investigate a wide range of unusual magnetic materials, and the chemistry and physics departments will use the magnetometer in several research and teaching projects: Understanding What Makes Computers Work In the Chemistry 065/Physics 065 course, Deconstructing the Computer, students take apart computers--literally and figuratively--to learn what makes them work. For example, in one unit, they construct ball and stick models of important materials to see how their form can play a role in their function in a computer. The magnetic-material exercise will help complement other activities in the course, team-taught by Ijiri and Stoll. Intermediate and Advanced Classes Ijiri, Stoll, and Scofield will put the magnetometer to use in intermediate and advanced chemistry and physics laboratory classes where students will investigate the nature of anisotropy, magnetic ordering, and superconductivity effects in magnetic wires and rare-earth oxides. Campus Research Students carrying out undergraduate research experiments will also be able to use the magnetometer to further their study of new intermetallics, nanocrystalline semiconductors, and magnetic films in a variety of temperature and magnetic-field conditions. They will undertake some of the research during Winter Term or as an honors project.
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