Dr. Brian Monson

Physics Instructor & Department Chair

I have a BS in physics from the University of Missouri-Rolla and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Arkansas. My research specialty is non-linear optics and I did part of my thesis work at the Army Center for Night Vision and Electro-optics at Ft. Belvoir, Va. I taught at the University of Tulsa and the Oklahoma school before coming here to ASMSA.

Contact Info

Phone: (501) 622-5242
Email: monsonb@asmsa.org
Office: 2404 - 4th floor Academic Building

Tutoring

6th Hour
Mondays from 3:45 to 4:45
Thursdays from 3:15 to 4:15
Other times by appointment

Class pages

Research

Eclipsing Binary Stars worksheet - This is an Excel spreadsheet that I wrote to help find the times for eclipses of binary stars given their period and the time of a previous minima. Excel uses Julian days internally to keep track of time and has built-in funcions to convert this internal date to more recognizable times. The sheet finds the time of a minima from the ephemeris data of the star, converts it into Excel's internal format in a hidden column, and then converts it to UT. The conversion to the internal format is done by subtracting the Julian date for 0:00 UT on 1 Jan 1904 which is when Excel's dating system begins. To use the sheet, just fill in the cells colored red with data from the star of interest and the times should automatically appear in the lableled columns. I find the number to put in the first cell in the epoch column by solving the epemeris equation for today's Julian date and then rounding up one. The example star has a period of 0.6 days so 5 periods is almost exactly 3 days. This is why the epoch column increments by 5. You can make the increment down that column any value needed for your star. The epoch does not have to be an integer. You could set it so that every entry ends in .5 to find secondary eclipses for example. If you use the sheet and like it, I'd appreciate an e-mail. Feel free to modify the sheet or send me suggestions.