Professor of Physics and Assistant Dean of Science.

I can be contacted at my Lab
(room B60 of the Physics building, phone: 765-494-6418; fax: 765-494-0706)
or in my office in room 950 of the Math building
(765-494-7915; fax: 765-494-1736).

email is a good way to reach me (ng@physics.purdue.edu)

My research interests include

(1) The physics of nanostructures and mesoscopic systems
My group studies the properties of very small metallic systems, including such phenomena as the Kondo effect in one and two dimensions, the behavior of domain walls in very narrow ferromagnetic wires, and fluid flow in extremely small structures.  Students who have recently been involved in this work include Todd Jacobs, Baris Cetin, Jiangtao Cheng, and Jacob Millspaw.  More details along with some of our recent papers are given on our mesoscopic page.

(2) Musical acoustics and the physics of the piano
We are studying why the piano sounds like a piano.  We are developing a physical model of the piano - this model will use Newton's laws to calculate the motion of all of the pieces of a piano along with the sound pressure which is produced.  This work also involves experimental studies of piano hammers, strings, and soundboards.  This work has been done by Andy Korty, James Winans, Stu Dietz, John Millis, James Roberts, and Laura Rueff.  More details of this work, including some of our recent publications are given at our piano www pages.

(3) Computational physics
I have a long standing interest in doing and teaching computational physics. This work includes the musical acoustics described above, along with my book Computational Physics (Prentice-Hall) which was developed when I taught a course on this topic.  Also available here is material related to my Computers in Physics article on vibrating strings.

(4) Guitar acoustics
We have just begun some modeling studies of the guitar.  Some information on this work and some calculated guitar tones can be found here.