Newspaper Page Text
Page 6
Campus News
Jilted gunman shoots Scientists unveil mysteries of coffee rings
student in dorm room
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.—A jilted boyfriend pumped three bullets
into his former girlfriend's new beau in a West Virginia University
dormitory Oct 23 before turning the gun on himself.
The gunman, Andrew Willis, 20, died later in the hospital from self
inflicted wounds to the head. The victim, WVU student Nicholas Thomp
son, was shot in the chest, stomach and leg and was listed in fair condition.
He is expected to survive, the university said.
The 18-year-old woman, also a WVU student was unharmed. The
university did not release her name.
According to reports, Willis drove for about two hours to the WVU
campus and went searching for his ex-girlfriend, who was visiting Thomp
son in his dorm room. When Thompson opened the door, Willis immedi
ately opened fire.
Several students who heard the shots said they thought it was a
Halloween prank. Thompson told police he initially thought he had been
shot with paint pellets rather than bullets, according to news reports.
Following the shooting, WVU president David Hardesty called for a
review of WVU’s security measures.
"When a tragedy like this occurs, it rocks our entire family of students,
faculty, staff and friends," Hardesty said. "Our hearts ache for the students
and families involved."
Willis was not a student at the university.
Cornell Univ. assists
destroyed CSU library
FORT COLLINS, Colo.-At
Colorado State University, stu
dents were left without library
books after a surprise flood last
summer destroyed much of the
campus library's holdings.
But in a special arrangement,
CSU students in need of research
materials can read publications
from the stacks at Cornell Uni
versity for the next year or so
while the campus recovers its
losses.
Articles requested at the CSU
library desk will be served up
from the Ithaca, N.Y., campus
via the Internet.
"We are blessed with a su
perb collection and dedicated
staff, and it seemed appropriate
in CSU’s time of need to share
our riches with them," said Sa
rah Thomas, Cornell’s librarian.
"The thought of a student body
and faculty prevented from ac
cess to material supposing
learning and scholarship is too
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much for us to bear."
Last July, a 4-foot wall of
water swept through CSU's cam
pus, swamping 15 buildings and
washing 450,000 library books
off their shelves.
The books eventually will be
salvaged by freeze-drying and
other restoration techniques,
CSU said. Five other universi
ties have offered to assist CSU,
including the libraries at Ari
zona State University and four
colleges in Colorado.
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CHICAGO, IL.-If ever you've
been keptawake at night wondering
why coffee stains always form rings,
well, you can rest easier now.
University of Chicago scientists
say they've figured out one of life's
nagging little mysteries.
Signey Nagel, a UC physics pro
fessor, said he took notice of the
coffee stains on his counter at home
one morning and then asked his
colleagues over lunch if they had
any answers.
"Why does all that material end
up at the edge, when it starts out
dispersed across (he whole drop?"
said Nagel. "Everybody got excited
about [the question], and everybody
had explanations lor it"
The scientists found out nobody
actually knew the answer—until now.
Nagel and his associates have pub
lished the results of their experi
ments in the Oct 23 issue of Nature.
Ring formation, say the scien
tists, actually turns out to be a com -
bination of factors: any surface
roughness "pins" the edge of the
drop, then evaporation at the edges
Indiana U. students protest
fraternity scavenger hunt
BLOOMINGTON, Ind.~Nearly
400 Indiana University students and
faculty members protested in front
of a fraternity house, saying a scav
enger hunt conducted by members
was racist, sexist and homophobic.
The protestors called for the ex
pulsion of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity,
a predominantly white fraternity,
front around the world
pulls more liquid-and suspended
solids-out to the edge from the cen
ter. The flow piles the material up at
the edges, where it eventually dries
and forms a ring.
In solving the stain problem,
Nagel and his colleagues undertook
a series of simple, off-the-cuff ex
periments. "Does the same thing
happen with other materials-red
wine, milk, tea, soup-yes. Differ
ent types of surfaces-metal, plas
tic, glass-still produced rings. In
fact, even drying the drop upside
down had no effect," he said.
Nagel said as word of experi
ments grew, unraveling the coffee
stain puzzle became a challenge to
many UC academics.
"More and more people got in
volved in coming up with theories
and doing experiments-people from
math, computer science, chemistry,
theoretical and experimental phys
ics, and at all levels from under
graduate to senior faculty."
For example, a UC professor of
computer science, Todd Dupont,
heard about the ring problem and
after details of the scavenger hunt
for pledges became public. Written
instructions told pledges, "You are
all Black Men" and ordered them to
seek out such items as "Pictures of
chicks making out," and a picture of
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News of the scavenger hunt were
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proposed the theory that an impor
tant feature might be that extra
evaporation happens near the edge
of the drop. Later, a graduate
student's experiments of looking at
an evaporating drop under a micro
scope showed Dupont's idea was
right.
Now that scientists have unrav
eled the answer to this fundamental
physics question, their work has
wider implications. Understanding
the phenomenon may aid industries
that rely on the uniform deposition
of solids suspended in liquid media
-paint, for example. It also may mean
dispersed solids could be deposited
in a controlled fashion-in creating
tiny electronic circuits, for instance.
"This whole project would not
have been possible without a group
effort," said UC Professor of Phys
ics Thomas Witten, one of the paper's
co-authors. "No one of use indi
vidually would have taken this
project seriously, but it grew collec
tively out of our common curiosity
and interests."
made public after a group of pledges
were arrested for stealing a sign.
Jason Nierman, the chapter's
president, has apologized for the
hunt, calling it a misunderstanding.
Meanwhile, IU and the national fra
ternity temporarily suspended the chap
ter pending an investigation by the dean
of students.