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Analysis of the Interlayer Force in Graphite by the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac Method and Kirzhnits Correction
Get PDFDensity functional theory is an approach to mathematically model and interpret complex many-atom systems by expressing the energy of the system as a functional of electron density. There are many variations of density functional theory, along with many corrections made to each. I have implored a specific model in density functional theory called the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac Method, along with a correction for the inhomogeneity of kinetic energy that was calculated by Kirzhnits, to predict the Van der Waals forces between layers in a graphite crystal. In my model, I assumed that each carbon atom had the electron configuration: 1s^22s2p^3 (4 valence electrons). I then determined wave functions for each orbital in the structure, and wrote the electron density as an appropriate linear combination of their magnitudes. After obtaining the density function, I normalized it across an arbitrary distance between two parallel planes equidistant from the nucleus so that the planes enclosed 5 of the 6 electrons. The purpose of this normalization is to isolate the electron in the 〖2p〗_z orbital, as it is the farthest away and chiefly responsible for the Van der Waals forces. This effectively modeled the graphite layers as stacked positive ionic slabs containing the nuclei and 5 electrons for each carbon in the lattice, in a sea of 〖2p〗_z electrons. This allowed me to use Gauss’s law to calculate the electric field from a slab. I then solved the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac equation to acquire the electric potential as a function of a perpendicular distance from a sheet, applying boundary conditions necessary for the model. I then related the potential to the density by Poisson’s equation, and calculated the energy per atom using the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac functional. Adding the Kirszhnits correction, I evaluated the integrals numerically, varying the interlayer distance, to approximate the equilibrium distance and the force constant and compared them to empirical values. Lastly, using these values, I approximated the exfoliation energy of graphite.Dr. Francis X. Har
Listening to the “Roar Which Lies on the Other Side of Silence”: Narration, Subjectivity, and Selfhood in Villette and Middlemarch
No full textThis is a thesis about women authors and the subjectivity of their protagonists and narration. In looking at Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and George Eliot’s Middlemarch, I seek to answer a few questions. How does subjective narration change the relationship between the narrator and reader? Why do the protagonists express themselves nearly exclusively in subjective language? Why do the plots of these two bildungsroman lack the linear nature of other novels? In the modern age, how does an authentic self express itself? What is the relationship between subjectivity, desire, and narration?
In this paper, I demonstrate the role of subjective communication and the presence of listeners as the fundamental building blocks of nineteenth-century women’s selfhood. First, I discuss what a novel about selfhood (bildungsroman) looks like, keeping in mind Nancy Armstrong’s argument in Domestic Desire: A Political History of the Novel. She writes about the subversive ways women write novels about desire. Next, I look closely at the novels in turn, following a basic pattern found in most bildungsroman—first paying attention to the undeveloped self; next, to the developing selfhood; and thirdly, to the full self. Finally, I consider what implications of each novel’s narrative voice and role of desire have for the reader. In doing so, I hope to encourage a reading of Villette and Middlemarch that harmonizes with the subjectiveness of each text, one that pays tribute to the forms of desire.
Villette, especially, has been decried by many as too full of desire. Matthew Arnold called it a novel full only of “hunger, rebellion, and rage” (qtd. in Cooper xxiii); William Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë’s hero and friend, commented on her singleness, and even the feminist Harriet Martineau, a dear friend of Brontë’s, called the book “almost intolerably painful” (qtd. in Cooper xxii). In the same vein, critics Gilbert and Gubar call Middlemarch a “Satanically ambitious book, a “home epic” (Finale) that tells the story not of great men but of a “foundress of nothing” (Prelude) (531). These criticisms are addressed fully in this thesis, and the futility and hunger found in both are given context.
The joy of Villette and Middlemarch lies in their subjectivity. Their protagonists’ goals are undefined, and their success is felt rather than known. Both narrators of the novels, Lucy Snowe and the omniscient narrator of Middlemarch, seek to transcend the words on the page and reach directly for the passions and desires of the readers through the tools that subjectivity offers. Lucy Snowe does this through symbolism and trance-like writing that seeks to circumvent analytical, detached readings of her story. Middlemarch’s narrator does so by sympathetically bridging the gap between characters, calling upon the readers to feel universal human emotions and conflicts. The narrators of Villette and Middlemarch are best read by readers who suspend judgments and enter into the desires, the interiority of their heroines. Villette does not seek to change the social order of its namesake town, but rather to tell Lucy’s story to the world. In the same way, Middlemarch’s narrator does not seek to change its namesake town, but to justify its characters to the sympathetic reader.
In these pages, I present a case for a different reading of women’s novels in the nineteenth century, one that allows for more personal, visceral responses to the texts. This is not to say that scholarly readings are of little or no value, but rather to carve out a place for reading with desire. Brontë sees the need for community, one that requires both listeners and speakers, in the growth of Lucy Snowe. In the same way, Eliot’s narrator creates a community of listeners and speakers, listeners who learn, through the narrator’s gentle guidance, to read between the lines of dialogue, to sympathize and realize the desires of each character.Barbara Black, John Ernes
Age and Gender Patterns in Strengths and Their Association with Trauma Symptoms
Get PDFObjective: To examine age and gender patterns in three strengths (community support, endurance, religious meaning making), and to explore whether the protective effects of strengths on trauma symptoms varies by age and gender.
Method: The sample was composed of 3,840 people from the southern U.S. between 2013 and 2018, with 89% of participants coming from counties with median household incomes below the national average.
Results & Conclusion: Regression analyses showed that the psychological strengths increased through the lifetime and trauma symptoms decreased through the lifetime. Although psychological strengths play an important role in resilience from trauma for much of the lifetime, as age increases the differences between those low in strengths and those higher in strengths decreases.This project was made possible through grants from the Digital Trust Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, and National Institute of Justice. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies
Do Florida and Belize populations of mangrove rivulus differ in aggression and fecundity?
Get PDFIn many species, aggressive behaviors are crucial to determining the outcome of dominance interactions and to successfully defend a territory. However, being overly aggressive can be costly in terms of injury as well as potentially suppressing reproduction. Thus it remains unclear what shapes the aggression that individuals display in dominance interactions. Is aggression shaped by the environment or is there genetic variation in aggressive behavior within and among populations? In this study we explored this question using genetically distinct clones of the self-fertilizing hermaphroditic mangrove rivulus (Kryptolebias marmoratus) collected many generations ago from populations in Florida and Belize. We paired individuals within their respective genetic clones and examined whether there were differences among populations in their aggression during dominance interactions and their production of embryos after these dominance interactions. The larger fish of the pair was put into the testing tank overnight, thereby establishing the tank as their territory (and dominant) while the smaller fish of the pair (from the same clone) was introduced at the start of the trial the next day. We then recorded the number of dominance displays, attacks, and chases performed by each partner. Individuals from Florida showed more dominance displays, attacks, chases, and overall aggressive behaviors in these dominance interactions compared to individuals from Belize. Although genetically distinct, genetic clones from the same population showed similar behavior within a population. Additionally, individuals from Belize produced more embryos than individuals from Florida after dominance interactions. This pattern is consistent with a suppressive effect of aggression and stress on reproduction. Why different levels of aggression might be favored in these populations remains unclear and ecological differences are clearly an interesting area for future research. Despite several generations of selfing and being reared in a common garden, population differences in aggression and fecundity seem to persist in the lab, suggesting genetic differences. Our results suggest that aggression and fecundity are shaped by both genetic and environmental factors that can vary among populations.Sewanee Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF
The Effects of Mass Shooting on Backgrounds Checks in the United States
Get PDFGun violence in America has been a national crisis for years, and the most destructive form of this crisis is mass shootings. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the United States saw more gun violence in 2020 than it has in decades, and when a mass shooting occurs in the United States, the response of the American public takes many forms. A measurable response is the demand for firearms throughout the United States following a mass shooting. Because of this, we decided to observe how 9 of the most deadly mass shootings over the past 20 years affected gun sales in America. We created an ARIMA model to measure the effect on firearm sales following these shootings. These sales are proxied by using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, as background checks are required to purchase a firearm legally in the United States. Our findings show that mass shootings increase the amount of background checks received by the NICS in the months following the event, and that the shootings carried out by individuals from foreign countries yield a higher increase in these checks, most likely due to the American public’s fear of international terrorism. We also find that firearm sales increase following the election of a democratic president, most likely due to the American public’s anticipation of more gun restrictions.
Mass-shootings occur in the United States on a near daily basis, and media coverage of these events may influence people to purchase firearms. Using a time-series model, we study the impact of the nine most severe mass-shootings in the US in the past 20 years on national background checks, which proxy for gun sales. We find that mass shootings increase the number of background checks reported by the National Institute of Crime Statistics in the following months. We also find that that shootings with connections to international terrorism result in a larger increase in these checks.Aaron Elro
THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION AT SAINT JAMES SCHOOL OF MARYLAND
No full textThis project is a historical analysis of the development of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Saint James School, established in 1842 at "Fountain Rock'' plantation in Hagerstown, Washington County, Maryland. It starts from the conception of the "Church school" by William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877) and goes·through the present time in the tenure of the Tenth Headmaster, Donald Stuart Dunnan (b. 1959). Saint James School identifies as "an Episcopal school within the Anglo-Catholic tradition" that "remains faithful to our historic identity as a Church school." The purpose for this project is to bring forward the "blind spots'' in the School's historic Oxford Movement and present-day Anglo-Catholic heritage and Muhlenberg's Church School Movement. For Saint James School to remain what it has been, but in a changed way, it must be theologically orthodox, liturgically traditional, and socially progressive governed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Muhlenberg's vision is still worth maintaining, but with a more comprehensive meaning and application. Saint James School can remain faithful to its stated mission of being a Muhlenbergian Church school whose Christianity is the basis for its inclusivity and Anglican affiliation and ecumenism enabling the School to prepare young people of all races, sexes, and gender identities to be "leaders for good in the world."Benjamin John Kin
NBA Contract Phenomenon: Performing When It Matters
Get PDFThe contract year phenomenon is when professional athletes'-performances increase in their final year of a contract in hopes of securing another deal. In this paper we estimate the effect of a contract year on NBA players’ performances. Our data set is composed of 2,397 players from the 2012-2017 seasons. We measure performance by the player efficiency rating (PER), which is a per-minute rating that adds all the player’s positive accomplishments and subtracts the negative ones. When removing the outliers of superstars and players who did not play at least 40 games from a fixed effects regression model indicate that performance increases 2.83%. These results are statistically significant at all conventional levels. As a robustness check we added retirement into the regression and found that it had no effect on performance. However, when we include the outliers contract year it has no statistically significant effect on performance.Professor Elro
Unto Thee Shall All Flesh Come
No full textThis thesis was born from two summers on The Mountain, one learning via ZOOM, an Independent Study with the Director, inspiring classes and faculty: and a supportive, nurturing, challenging, and inspirational advisor. It was also born of life experiences, a love of literature and writing, of poetry, people, places, and intellectual endeavors. It is my hope that these weavings come through, a literal textually in the text, containing in it an underlying element of spirituality and embodied thinking, an attempt to veer from any threat of religious dualism that splits the human person into “sacred and profane.” Nearly fifty pages attempts to subvert this habit in Western thought, whether ruminating on Mary Oliver in the Ogeechee River, or recalling a Eucharistic celebration when I could not stop thinking about Jesus’ own body as the location of absolutely everything. This began the thinking of my own body as a particular location for events¬—life-changing, healing, traumatic etc., as a resting place of sorts within myself.
The thesis itself is divided into five sections, each with an image of a tattoo, one of my tattoos, as the site of what I have called “exquisite pain.” The act itself is a re-claiming of the body, specifically a queer body that it deeply devoted to “the church,” or the “ecclesia,” the body, and not necessarily the institution. They represent struggle and launching places, and places for memory. The collection weaves with the images and their meaning, but practices what in liturgical language is known as “anamnesis,” or the process of remembering and looking forward. It would have been easy to take the poems and match them all with the particular image and themes they represent, or simply to order them based on topic, though that felt inauthentic to the journey.
What is more, in my life as a priest and essay writer of theology, I have woven some prose in the collection to provide context, offer some explanation (loosely), and give voice to some of the poems in a broader way. They reflect the liminality and hybridity of the body, and connect in that way as a part of the manuscript.
It is important to note that the collection carries through with both theme and context, style and feeling, image and word, and most importantly, looking back and pressing forward. This is the “anamnesis” spoken of earlier. When first ordering this on a dining room table with painter’s tape keeping pages together, I thought of Susan Grimm’s “Ordering the Storm” and the multiplicity that exists for this—sometimes making sense and sometimes looking like all life’s events falling from heaven during the arc of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. The reader may think they’ve moved from religious “stuff,” and then be startled back to it in another section, because that is the scope of my life. Things are not linear (necessarily).
Many of these poems were composed while visiting Georgia while I lived in Massachusetts, and when my life fell apart. They were written from memory, from a deep part of myself that was able to speak out of trauma and pain, and eventually gratitude.
As I finish this from Savannah, where I now live, and where I am learning to heal, this collection has given me that gift