Latest Updates | tjlafave.com

Enjoy some of the latest additions to this site:

(1/14/2025) Article: Unexpected Hops Down Rabbit Holes (Medium)
(1/6/2025) Article: Peer-Review: Check for Plagiarism, Parallel Publication FIRST (Medium)
(12/10/2024) Video Tutorial: How to Make an Animated Voltmeter in Powerpoint (YouTube)
(12/09/2024) Video Tutorial: Solid Metal-Mediated Epitaxy (SMME)
(12/05/2024) Video Tutorials: PowerPoint
(12/05/2024) Video Tutorial: Fabrication of Patterned Oxide on Silicon Wafer
(12/02/2024) Resources >> User Manuals
(11/05/2024) Professional >> Research >> Nanoscale Electrostatics .
(10/25/2024) L005 | The AI-Contaminated Internet [on LinkedIn]
(10/16/2024) L004 | How to Make a Periodic Table in PowerPoint [on LinkedIn]
(10/14/2024) L003 | Professional Development Tip: Fast Equations in PowerPoint [on LinkedIn]
(09/26/2024) L002 | Gearing up for VIDEO Presentations with PowerPoint Skills [on LinkedIn]
(09/24/2024) M012 | Two Bits of Memory: How I Made a Scientific Discovery [on Medium]
(09/20/2024) M011 | Losing Your Identity [on Medium]
(09/19/2024) L001 | A Chicago Comeback: Influit Energy [on LinkedIn]
(09/06/2024) M010 | Make a Psychological Leap Into Debt Recovery [on Medium]
(08/28/2024) M009 | Professionalism when Under Pressure [on Medium]
(08/20/2024) M008 | My College Career Began with OMNI Magazine [on Medium]
(08/19/2024) M007 | Would-Be Physicist Learns About Gravity the Hard Way [on Medium]
(08/14/2024) M006 | "You're Too Smart to Be American!" [on Medium]
(08/01/2024) M005 | Get Started in Science with a Big Bang by Getting More Out of Less Writing [on The Quantastic Journal]
(07/11/2024) M004 | Measuring Thing [on The Quantastic Journal]
(07/09/2024) M003 | Pay Attention to Obscure Remarks [on Medium]
(06/28/2024) M002 | Poetry in the Wild [on Medium]
(06/26/2024) M001 | My First Medium Post | Autobiography: Why You Should [on Medium]
(02/02/2024) C023 | Declutter and Filter Your Life
(01/16/2024) C022 | My First Job
(07/12/2023) C021 | The Finer Points of My Scientific Discovery
(07/05/2023) C020 | Chemistry: A 1/2 Factor in My Scientific Discovery
(07/03/2023) C019 | How Do You Refocus When You're Interrupted?
(07/03/2023) C018 | My Non-Crackpot Scientific Discovery
(06/26/2023) C017 | Reception of My Scientific Discovery
(06/23/2023) C016 | Making a Scientific Discovery
(06/23/2023) C015 | The Loneliness of Scientific Discovery
(06/23/2023) C014 | Empathy: A Top Ten Requirement of a Globally Connected Species
(05/22/2023) C013 | Multitasking: What's It Good For?
(05/19/2023) C012 | Science/Fiction Mashup: The Number 42
(05/11/2023) C011 | What it Takes to Be a Fully Self-Aware AI
(05/02/2023) C010 | Geometry in the Periodic Table: Part II
(04/21/2023) C009 | Geometry in the Periodic Table: Part I
(04/10/2023) Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> Tremble
(04/04/2023) Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> The Flute: Second Movement
(04/03/2023) Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> The Flute
(03/31/2023) C008 | TMI: Too Much Information(?)
(03/31/2023) C007 | The Salad Plate of Quantum Physics
(03/31/2023) C006 | "Less is More"
(03/31/2023) C005 | Is Withdrawing from Class a Bad Thing?
(03/31/2023) C004 | Professionalism When Under Pressure
(03/30/2023) Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> Pages of Mind
(03/30/2023) Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> Poetic Bits and Pieces
(03/30/2023) Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> Orihula Hucks
(03/29/2023) Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> Integrity
(11/08/2022) C003 | Anthropomorphism in Science
(11/02/2022) Interphasic, Intraphasic, and Electrophasic
(10/30/2022) C002 | My Doctoral Advisor, Ray Tsu
(10/28/2022) Resources >> Electrooptics >> The Transfer Function Library >> 10 | Transfer Function Library (PNGs)
(10/20/2022) 006 | Discrete Transformations in the Thomson Problem
(9/29/2022) Resources >> Optics >> The Optics Library (updated with SLMs, Fresnel zone plates)
(9/28/2022) Resources >> Optics >> The Optics Library (updated)
(9/26/2022) Resources >> Electroopics >> The Transfer Function Library >> The Original Transfer Function Library
(9/23/2022) Resources >> Optics >> The Optics Library
(9/22/2022) Resources >> Templates >> "Less is More" PowerPoint Presentation
(9/19/2022) Resources >> Templates >> Interactive Equipment Log Book
(6/15/2022) Professional >> Graduate Research >> MS Thesis
Professional >> Curriculum Vitae
Professional >> Publications
Professional >> Publications || Electrostatics, Quantum Computing, Optoelectronics, THz Technologies
Personal >> Writing >> Poetry Collections >> Animated Poetry
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ResearchGate: 300 reads of Discrete Transformations in the Thomson Problem

Well, it's not something I'd go out to dinner with someone special or throw a little party at my house to celebrate, but hey, achieving 300 reads for one of my published papers on ResearchGate is a good thing to celebrate by posting a quick blog entry to discuss some interesting things about my thinking on the problem of the Thomson Problem.

You can access the paper on the Journal of Electrostatics website or for free at arXiv. It would be worth the effort for you to understand the figure below. Meanwhile, also click through here to get to my blog entry to read a little more. It's about one of the underlying things that nagged me so much it led me to discover a connection between J.J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom and real atomic structure throughout the periodic table of elements.

Earth Day Photo Contest 2022 - Amherst, Williamsville, Pendleton, NY

Here's my winning entry in Assemblymember Karen McMahon's Earth Day Photo Contest here in the Amherst, Williamsville, Pendleton area. The photo was taken in Glen Park, Williamsville, NY -- a park I frequently visit and photograph for my many neighbors on the Nextdoor app (especially those who either don't have the time to or cannot get out to enjoy the natural beauty of the Village of Williamsville's park. Glen Park includes Glen Falls on Ellicott Creek.

Glen Park | Village of Williamsville, NY

Glen Park on Facebook

Glen Park on Wikipedia

My Return to Some Kind of Normalcy

As part of my return to some kind of normalcy after a couple years of exceptionally difficult personal problems, I've updated and posted my Masters Thesis online.

The next step is to update and post my Doctoral Thesis online, finish editing a series of papers based on my research for publication, and then see what lays ahead. In the midst of these developments, I've begun to post a variety of professional resources online like The Optics Library, The Optoelectronics Transfer Function Library (xFig), an Interactive Equipment Log Book, and a bare-bones "Less is More" PowerPoint Template.

A Piece of the Action (APA) -- {my science blog}

Each week I will present a small piece of information concerning the growing body of research I began that involves scientific connections between basic electrostatic properties of discrete charged particles and atoms as well as developments in a comprehensive electrostatics interactions framework that may be readily applied to nanoscale devices, macromolecules, and biomolecular systems.

The aim of this work is to begin to understand the mathematical connections between the classical electrostatic mechanics and existing quantum mechanics involved in the description of atomic structure. This may mean finding connections between the geometric symmetries of point charges (interacting through electrostatic forces -- Coulomb's law) and spherical harmonics, for example.