Applied Physics Students at Engineering Design Day

UA Physics undergraduates, Luke Garman, Liam Falk, and Max Betaille, participated in the 2025 Craig M. Berge Engineering Design Day, which showcases the yearlong efforts of UA engineering senior projects. The prototypes designed and built by students and displayed on Design Day feature a wide range of solutions to real-world engineering questions. Student teams compete for corporate- and private-sponsored cash prizes that reward innovation and excellence in engineering design.

Luke Garman's project was a helium-powered light gas gun with a testing chamber that shoots nylon beads at supersonic speeds into a radome sample (the cover on the tip of a missile). It could propel a projectile up to Mach 1.5 (514 m/s) and is meant to simulate supersonic raindrop collisions that a missile flying through a rainstorm would experience.

Max Betaille led a group that built a fully automated testing station for class IV fiber-coupled lasers. Manual testing of these lasers takes a lot of time and effort. This complicated and ambitious project required developing and integrating a PLC-based automation system, including different safety and EPO systems, communicating with a chiller, a laser driver, and a PC to monitor everything.

Liam Falk theoretically developed, designed, and prototyped a depolarizer made of fiber optic cable. The device took in polarized light and depolarized it to a degree of <5%. To depolarize the light, Liam had to devise a way to randomize the phase relationship, constantly changing its polarization state in time.

For his project, Liam was awarded the Coherent Fish Out of Water Award, which is given to a student who accomplished a task outside of his/her realm of expertise.

Congratulations to Liam, Luke, and Max!