Micah Karahadian’s (19) fascination with physics began with an accident. He was with his father, an electrician at the time, at one of his job sites and accidentally touched an exposed wire. Bored, he had taken a tool and started smashing through the sheathing of wire on the ground. Although it wasn’t a live wire, exposing the ground wire was enough to produce a sharp shock. That experience made him not want to ever be caught off guard by nature again. To do so, he tried to learn everything about how the world works.
Being a person of faith also influenced his decision to study physics.
“I think there is a very purpose-driven view of how the world is created and designed,” Karahadian said. “So I learned a lot more about my creator when I studied physics. I think that is a very beautiful thing.”
Karahadian explained that as humans we tend to look for patterns. But when trying to understand the universe, we are confronted with the question of how there might be order from what appears to be a chaotic system. One way is for scientists to test theories to determine scientific laws.
“I think there is a very purpose-driven view of how the world is created and designed,” Karahadian said. “So I learned a lot more about my creator when I studied physics. I think that is a very beautiful thing.”
Karahadian believes astronomer Galileo Galilei said it best: “Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.” This quote informs his belief in God because, for him, it also relates to Romans 1:20, which reads, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
Currently, Karahadian is a Physics Ph.D. candidate at UC Davis. During his first year of the program, he was announced a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. A highly competitive fellowship — which often amasses over 20,000 applicants per year — is awarded annually to 2,500 students. The fellowship provides three years of funding support across a five-year program in the amount of $37,000 as a research stipend and an additional $16,000 to be allocated for education costs per year.
Karahadian had submitted an application solely at the recommendation of a professor. The news surrounding receiving the fellowship caught Karahadian by surprise, calling it a “complete and total unexpected blessing. I had a moment of uncontrolled excitement. I had to go and yell in my car. I started crying.”
Karahadian is mentored by Jeremy Munday, Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor at UC Davis. Munday is collaborating with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on creating on a low energy nuclear reactor. The project is funded for two and a half years by the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy.
In his capacity as a quantum research assistant on this project, Karahadian tries to facilitate nuclear fusion between two hydrogen nuclei. To explain this Karahadian used the example of trying to put the ends of magnets together, where the electromagnetic barrier prevents ‘like’ charges from interacting.
“You can actually engineer that on the quantum level,” he explained. “You’re trying to lower that barrier to fuse two hydrogen nuclei. But they’re both positively charged and don’t want to touch. But if you can engineer the local environment to decrease the amount of the Coulomb barrier — that energy barrier — then you can get them to fuse better.”
For example, one way physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research — widely known as CERN — have achieved this is through using the Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator in the world. In the accelerator, enough kinetic energy is created to collide protons or other particles in order to break through that Coulomb barrier.
“Now, what I try to do is lower the barrier by diffusing hydrogen inside of a metal through a process that is called plasmon-catalyzed fusion. A plasmon is a collective oscillation of surface charge on a metal. The reason metal can conduct electricity is because there are electrons zipping around. If you add one electron, another is going to pop out. That’s how you have conduction.”
“I find the best faculty at universities have had experience in national labs. My ultimate calling is going into education. I feel so fulfilled teaching students.”
He further clarified that similar to how a pebble creates ripples in a pond, when light of a certain polarization hits the surface of a metal, it’ll cause electrons to move and create a wave.
“That collective oscillation of surface charge can screen out positive charges; therefore, we can hypothesize that you can facilitate fusion that way. This is called lattice confinement fusion, which has produced interesting results. But what I’m working on is more like the gas pedal: How can I increase or decrease the fusion rate under optical excitation?”
Karahadian is especially grateful for how his professors at PLNU helped prepare him for his graduate career.
“The breadth of study that we have there is awesome,” Karahadian said. “Everything I learned for a physics degree — from mathematical model[s] to chemistry to nuclear physics — I literally use every day. And because PLNU is a liberal arts college, it adequately prepared me to have conversations with other people as a normal person and not just as a scientist. PLNU also encouraged spiritual growth.”
One physics professor at the time who was particularly instrumental to his current success was Heidi Doss, Ph.D., who now lectures at San Diego State University. He recalls how a group of researchers at MIT reached out to him for assistance running an experiment. Even though he didn’t have the funds to fly out there, Doss assisted him in traveling to MIT to connect with those researchers.
In terms of short-term goals, Karahadian would like to conduct research in a national lab, which feeds into his ultimate goal of either teaching or running a research lab at a university.
“You can’t do everything all at once all the time. I think that if you have gratitude, empathy, and humility in everything you do, then you’ll go far in life, including obtaining a higher educational degree.”
“I find the best faculty at universities have had experience in national labs. My ultimate calling is going into education. I feel so fulfilled teaching students.”
For students who are considering earning a degree in physics, Karahadian suggested that they should learn to be patient with themselves, which is something that he had to learn the hard way.
“You can’t do everything all at once all the time. I think that if you have gratitude, empathy, and humility in everything you do, then you’ll go far in life, including obtaining a higher educational degree.”
