November 20, 1997
UW physicist earns highest government award
Experiments to understand single-bubble sonoluminescence — where a pinpoint of light and extreme temperatures are created inside a tiny bubble when liquids are bombarded with high-pitched sound waves — have earned the University of Washington’s Tom Matula a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Scientists are eager to understand what happens during single-bubble sonoluminescence because the energy produced could be use to destroy hazardous materials including chemical wastes.
“This is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers at the outset of their independent research careers,” said John Gibbons, President Clinton’s assistant for science and technology, who contacted Matula on behalf of the White House.
Matula, a physicist with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory for four years, received the award in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. At the same ceremony he was recognized with a separate award from the Department of Energy Defense Programs called the Young Scientist and Engineering Award.
Matula is part of a group exploring innovative uses of sound energy at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory. One use involves applying sound energy at just the right frequency to a liquid, such as water, so that a tiny bubble forms and collapses and forms again about 25,000 times a second. The energy generated by each collapse is so intense that light is given off and some scientists estimate that the temperature inside the collapsing bubble is six times the temperature of the sun’s surface.
Generating the bubble is no longer a major challenge — Matula has even done it by applying sound energy to a soda-fountain glass full of water — but describing the mechanisms at work alludes scientists.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California think that their computer model describing other imploding processes can be used to describe single- bubble sonoluminescence. Matula has been conducting the lab experiments at the UW to see if they’re right.
The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers includes a promise of funding for part of Matula’s work during the next five years.
To be considered for the White House and Department of Energy awards, nominees must have earned their doctoral degrees within the past five years — Matula earned his doctorate in physics from Washington State University in 1993 — and be working on their first subcontract with a national lab.
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For more information:
Tom Matula
(206) 685-7654
matula@u.washington.edu <!—at end of each paragraph insert
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