Featured Scholar:
Ryan Chancey
2003 - 2004 University Scholar
Mentor: Jack Sabin
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Ryan Chancey wants to build bridges, and he is starting
by building one between the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering
and the Departments of Physics and Chemistry. Though he is a civil engineering
student with a future in construction, Ryan has spent the past three years
examining nanomolecules under the guidance of physics professors Jack
Sabin and Frank Harris.
“During my sophomore year of college when I was trying to figure
out what I wanted to do with myself, I had Dr. Sam Trickey as a physics
professor,” Ryan says. “I went to visit him during his office
hours one day, and we started talking about physics research and, under
his recommendation, I was hired that summer as Frank Harris’ research
assistant and I’ve been here ever since.”
Crossing over college and departmental boundaries, Ryan has thrived as
a physics researcher. In addition to his University Scholars Program research
paper, Ryan has published two papers in professional publications—one
in the Danish journal KVANT (English translation, Quantum),
which is comparable to the US journal Scientific American; and
one in the American Physical Society’s Physical Review A.
His 40-page senior honors thesis, “Justifiable Precision in Structural
Engineering Calculations,” is in press with the American Society
of Civil Engineering journal Practice Periodical on Structural Design
and Construction.
Ryan’s research examines the carbon molecule Buckministerfullerene,
nicknamed the “buckyball”, which has garnered a tremendous
amount of research attention over the past decade. Discovered by its namesake
R. Buckminister Fuller in 1985, the buckyball is the third major form
of pure carbon—preceded by graphite and diamonds—and is the
roundest and most symmetrical large molecule known to man. Used in the
hot new field nanotechnology, buckyballs are hoped to have lucrative commercial
uses, from finely
tuned pharmaceuticals to broad-based industrial applications. Ryan explores
how buckyballs respond to stress.
“When you were a kid and your dad had a lamp or a remote control
that he didn’t want anymore and he gave it to you, what was the
first thing you did with it?” Ryan asks. “The intuitive thing
for you to do to is take it apart. You may never get it back together
but at least you know what it is made out of and how it works. So we took
this ball through computer simulations which threw it at a wall at different
kinetic energies, from very slow to very fast, and got it to break apart.”
Ryan and the research crew collaborated with Danish researcher Lene Oddershede
who did her PhD dissertation work on the same kind of study, except she
threw large objects like china plates and bananas frozen in liquid nitrogen
against a wall and charted her experimental findings. “Our simulation
results were very close to that of the experimental results,” Ryan
says. “But the energy range at which it is practical to perform
experiments or the speed of which it may be thrown has a finite range.
In a computer, you can do it at any speed, so we took it well above and
below the experimental range.”
Ryan traveled to Belgium to present his research findings and went to
Copenhagen to meet with Lene Oddershede to discuss this work and future
collaborations. Though Ryan graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in
civil engineering in December, he is continuing to work on his research
with Frank Harris, despite the fact that he is pursuing a PhD in civil
engineering.
“I know that the practical application between civil engineering
and physics is very little, but there is a theoretical application,”
he says. “One of the big topics of structural design and construction
is the fracture of construction materials, mainly concrete and steel.
The main component of steel is carbon, and I now understand fractured
carbon at what we call the “mesoscopic” level. I think that’s
really going to help me understand fracture mechanisms at a higher level.”
Upon receiving his graduate degree, Ryan plans to start his career building
bridges, rather than designing them, working as an engineer on large construction
projects. His enjoyment of construction goes back to his teenage years
when he helped his father build their family home. “I was on the
job site every day after school, digging holes and supervising some of
the work, and I loved it. I grew up watching my dad who was a contractor
develop apartment complexes and build homes and I always loved the construction
part of it. That’s when I started liking big buildings and bridges.”
As an undergraduate, Ryan was a member of the American Society of Civil
Engineers, Golden Key International Honor Society and coordinator of SECME,
a service society for at-risk youth. In 2003, he was honored by UF President
Charles Young with a recognition award for academic achievement and service
to the university. Ryan is now in his first semester of graduate school
at UF and says the best thing the USP taught him was how to reach out
beyond academic boundaries and work with others. “What I learned
first and foremost is the importance of collaboration,” he says.
“It’s important to form connections—interdepartmental,
departmental and international—and share information.”
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