STEM Speaker 1: Bernd Geh
- Date: September 16, 2026
- Time: 3:30 - 4:30 pm
- Location: SL-116
Measuring the Speed of Light with Home-Brew Equipment
This talk will include a short history of how the speed of light was measured, then turns to a home-built experiment that puts the question to the test. The apparatus is deliberately modest — an intensity-modulated laser diode, a photodiode detector, and an oscilloscope — used to clock light over a few-hundred-meter path on the SCC campus.
STEM Speaker 2: Steffen Eikenberry
- Date: October 14, 2026
- Time: 3:30 - 4:30 pm
- Location: SL-116
AI and Energy by the Numbers
You are probably at least vaguely aware that AI requires a great deal of energy and water, but how bad is that ChatGPT query really? That request for a cartoon avocado armchair? That vast multi-agent swarm working 24 hours a day to crack all cybersecurity? This talk will give you a basic numerical framework to get at the answers, and to understand the debate around data centers.
Dr. Steffen Eikenberry is Clinical Associate Professor of Data Science at Arizona State University, where he teaches on environmental mathematics and data science. He is firmly convinced that if you really want to understand any topic you simply must do the math!