Catherine Crouch

I'm an associate professor in the Department of Physics at Swarthmore College. I joined the department in September of 2003 and was awarded tenure in February of 2009.

Current Courses

Spring 2010:

• Physics 4L: Electricity, magnetism, and optics with biomedical applications

Temporary page with links for Physics 4L

• Physics 4L labs (Wednesday and Thursday afternoons)
• Physics 81-82: Advanced Laboratory

Fall 2009:

• Physics 112 (junior seminar in electricity and magnetism)
• Physics 81-82: Advanced Laboratory
• Physics 8 labs (sophomore majors' electricity and magnetism course)

Experimental Research

In my research laboratory, we study light emission from individual tiny semiconductor particles known as nanocrystals. The time dependence of the light emission gives us information about the dynamics of the electrons in a single nanoparticle and in its surroundings. (read more...)

Professional Background

Here you can review my publications, invited talks, contributed conference presentations, professional information, and curriculum vitae.

Research Experience

Prior to joining the Swarthmore faculty, I studied micro- and nanoscale materials from a couple of other angles. For my doctoral work, I studied the interactions between a pair of "quantum dots", or tiny regions to which electrons are confined, by measuring the flow of current through the pair. As a postdoctoral fellow, I investigated ways to fabricate micro- and nanoscale structures on semiconductors and metals using laser ablation, and measured the novel optical and electrical properties of these materials. (read more...)

Physics Education Research

As a postdoctoral fellow, I was involved in a variety of projects to assess the effectiveness of physics instruction, and to develop more effective ways of teaching introductory physics at the college level. I have remained involved in these areas though devoting much less time to them than to my experimental physics research. (read more...)

Curriculum Development

In addition to teaching the usual physics undergraduate curriculum, I have launched a new introductory physics course at Swarthmore especially designed for life science students, Physics 4L. (read more ...)

I have also contributed six chapters to a new introductory physics textbook by Eric Mazur that will be published by Addison-Wesley in 2010.