Welcome students and friends!

My name is Michael R. Cohen and I am an Assistant Professor of Physics at Shippensburg University located in Shippensburg, PA.

This term, I am involved with the Department's Astronomy and Introductory Physics courses. In my off-hours, I work on furthering the Physics for Society project, to promote physics throughout our classes and outside of Shippensburg.

Physics is a science that relies strongly on mathematics as its natural language. Calculus is particularly important in undergraduate study. So, if you need some help to get started, or might just like to refresh yourself on some ideas, here are some likely math sites:

• Karl's Calculus Tutor
• Ian Craw's Calculus Course
• Calculus@Internet

If you would like recommendations for something a bit more than this, drop me a note...

WHAT'S NEW?
The Department is gearing up for our new nanofabrication concentration. If you're interested, just get in touch with Allen Armstrong or me

RESEARCH

My current research interests are in solid surface physics and photonics:

• a piece of semi-classical scattering theory meant to simulate the intensity profiles obtained in low energy electron diffration from crystalline surfaces;
• an experimental system for measuring the integrated intensity of light diffusely scattered from solid surfaces;
• the topographic model for light scattering (2-D power spectral density distribution function) corresponding to the classical optics of the integrated light measurement.

In the future, it would be interesting to see if the classical optics of light scattering can be extended to include local, surface electronic features in an intuitive fashion.