Maryland Day 2025

                                                                                                                    Shawn Fickes

                                                                                                                       An intense moment.

Electromagnetism (theremin, sphere)

Theremin

Hannah McCright (B.S., Physics, 2025) shows two excited,  future scientists the theremin.

                Heather Pettit playing with the theremin.

 Uncle Sam testing out the theremin.

The Story of the Theremin

The theremin, originally known as the aetherphone, etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/therminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist).  It is named after its investor, Leon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928.  

The instrument's controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas which function not as radio antennas but rather as position sensors. Each antenna forms one half of a capacitor with each of the thereminist's hands as the other half of the capacitor. These antennas capacitively sense the relative position of the hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.

The sound of the instrument is often associated with eerie situations. The theremin has been used in movie soundtracks such as Miklós Rózsa's Spellbound and The Lost Weekend, Bernard Herrmann's The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Justin Hurwitz's First Man, as well as in theme songs for television shows such as the ITV drama Midsomer Murders and the Disney+ series Loki, the latter composed by Natalie Holt. The theremin is also used in concert music (especially avant-garde and 20th- and 21st-century new music); for example, Mano Divina Giannone is a popular American thereminist^{[citation needed]} who along with his orchestra, The Divine Hand Ensemble, regularly holds said concerts. It is also used in popular music genres, such as rock.

Optics

(polarization discs, microscope, hologram)

Millicent Ayako explains how beautiful color patterns form in transparent objects using light polarization.

Sheng-Wei Wang setting up the hologram (shown below).    Diffraction "grating" rainbow discs lie on the front of the table.

Butterfly hologram set up by Meredith Pettit in a very, very dark room on Maryland Day 2024.  The same experiment is used in 2025.

Diffraction "grating" rainbow discs

Diffraction "grating" rainbowglasses and discs

Looking out the window normally.

The same scene using diffraction "grating" rainbow glasses or disc.

Sphere