John Hauptman, professor of physics and astronomy, gave his students a chance to develop solutions for real-life problems.

Hauptman and his class became a part of the DREAM project, a multinational research group whose mission is to advance science through developing physics and scientific projects.

“We needed some new portable power supplies,” said Aaron Bazal, sophomore in electrical engineering, who worked on an intensifying project for half a semester. “I went out and researched the project. I built it from the ground up and put it all together.”

Working with Hauptman was a valuable experience for Bazal.

“He has a lot of experience and he gives us enough room to do our work, but at the same time keeps a close enough eye on us so we don’t get too off topic or far away,” Bazal said.

One of the unique approaches for the students was that all the equipment that was used was recycled from old experiments.

“Typically they just spend money on new equipment every single time,” Bazal said.

For Bazal, one of the most valuable things taken from working on these scientific projects was the experience.

“I learned to see how things function and where they fit in,” Bazal added.

The experiments were funded by the Department of Energy. Another experiment required students to build a calorimeter that measures the incoming energy of a particle.

“The idea of any physics is that you collide particles and whatever comes out, you better measure it,” Hauptman said. “It comes out of the velocity of light and you get a collision every billionth of a second. It’s a real challenge to do this kind of an experiment.”

Hauptman said the problems the students solve are valuable for students as it gives them a new way of learning.

“You can a lot from books, but there’s a lot of things you don’t learn from books,” Hauptman said.

However, these products may not come to fruition, but Hauptman is hopeful.

“These projects could be a total waste of time and money,” Hauptman said. “You never know though that you may end up developing solutions that could be very useful later on.”

It all started with James Clerk Maxwell, a 19th century Scottish physician who, through his research, developed the theories that would later be used to create devices such as cell phones.

“Developing those electronic magnetic waves for those devices came from Maxwell’s equations,” Hauptman said. “Without those equations, you wouldn’t have those devices.”

Hauptman believes that science is one of the pillars of the economy because of the solutions that come from it.

“Scientific research and development in physics and chemistry departments are worth a lot of money,” Hauptman said. “This has been said and I believe it, just about 80 percent of the wealth of the Western democracies comes from physics. We don’t spend nearly as much enough money on scientific research.”