Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Examining The Nexus Between Scientific Literacy And Identity In General Chemistry, Tiffany Chamberlain

WWU Graduate School Collection

Scientific literacy is a crucial goal of science education. All citizens need scientific understanding to make rational and informed decisions, and to feel confident in making such decisions. Many students harbor doubts about belonging in science and their identities as science persons. As such, science educators are tasked with helping students develop these skills as they engage in various courses. College instructors incorporate scientific literacy skills as part of their courses in which students are encouraged to develop a science person identity (i.e. science identity) through science identity work. Therefore, learning can be seen as a process of identity …

Estuarine Wetland Restoration Impacts On Carbon Sequestration In The Oldest Projects Along The West Coast, Jenna Schroeder

WWU Graduate School Collection

Mitigating carbon dioxide’s impact on our climate has become an important area of study. One such mitigation technique includes enhancing and protecting the earth’s natural carbon sinks. Estuarine wetlands, though occupying a small fraction of the Earth’s surface, are recognized for their significant carbon storage capacity. This thesis investigates the long-term impacts of estuarine wetland restoration on carbon sequestration by comparing mature restoration sites (20+ years post-restoration) with natural reference sites along California, Oregon, and Washington coasts. This study included 12 estuarine wetlands that each contained at least one reference site and one restoration site. Carbon sequestration rates were determined …

Dataset For The Incorporation Of Climate Change Into A Multiple Stressor Risk Assessment For The Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus Tshawytscha) Population In The Yakima River, Washington Usa, Wayne Landis, Chelsea J. Mitchell, John D. Hader, Rory Nathan, Emma E. Sharpe

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Data files available below

This data set is in support of Landis et al (in press 2024). A key question in understanding the implications of climate change is how to integrate ecological risk assessments that focus on contaminants with the environmental alterations from climate projections. This article summarizes the results of integrating selected direct and indirect effects of climate change into an existing Bayesian network previously used for ecological risk assessment. The existing Bayesian network Relative Risk Model (BN-RRM) integrated the effects of organophosphate pesticides concentrations, water temperature, and dissolved oxygen levels on the Chinook salmon population in the Yakima …

Using Trace Element Concentrations In Volcanic Ash To Elucidate Magma Sources To Koma Kulshan’S (Mount Baker) Most Recent Explosive Eruption – The 6.7 Ka Ba (Black Ash) Tephra, Stone Machel

Geology Graduate and Undergraduate Student Scholarship

Koma Kulshan (Mount Baker) is an active stratovolcano in the northern Washington Cascades. Kulshan’s most recent magmatic eruption at 6.7 ka was explosive, producing the ~0.2 km³ BA tephra (black ash) from the edifice (Scott et al. 2019). Comprehensive geochemical data for the BA tephra were previously limited to major elements from one whole rock lapillus (silicic andesite) and several in situ glass analyses (dacite), despite being Kulshan’s most voluminous Holocene tephra. Here, I present the first extensive major and trace element study of the pyroxene- and plagioclase-bearing BA tephra glass to determine magma source and eruption processes. My …

Washington Conservation Corps Intern, Augie D. Alexander

College of the Environment Internship Reports

My crew was based out of Mt. Vernon, WA and we spent most of our time working in Skagit county. Including me, there were 5 members of the crew and a supervisor. A typical day would involve meeting in Mt. Vernon at 7am, piling in the work truck, and heading off to wherever our sponsor for the week needed us. There were also opportunities to be a part of what was called a “spike”, either a 4 or 8 day backcountry trip that usually involves trail maintenance. Throughout the summer I got the opportunity to be on 2 different “spikes”. …

Snohomish County Freshwater Ecology Intern, Ollie Cox

College of the Environment Internship Reports

As a Freshwater Ecology intern, much of my work was part of the County’s State of Our Waters (SOW) program. The SOW program is unique because of its comprehensive and standardized approach to monitoring. SOW monitoring uses five indicators to assess stream health, including water quality, hydrology, aquatic life, habitat, and land use.

By The Campfire: How Representation In Video Games Can Be Improved, Hunter Smith

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

By the Campfire is a video game designed with accurate and thorough representation in mind from the start of development. Its purpose is to showcase the ways in which the player character in a video game can accurately represent anyone who plays it, and that the non-player characters in a video game can be generated in a way that diverse groups can be represented without harmfully misrepresenting them. This project includes a document that explains the process by which this game was created and why certain choices were made when implementing the games systems. The document details a survey that …

Blood Coagulation Factor Ix: Purification, Activation, Crystallization, Juliet Mcgill

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper presents readers with an optimized procedure for the purification, activation, and crystallization of selected blood coagulation Factor IX double mutant (FIX_2). Through the completion of this work, we aim to enhance future biochemical and structural studies by providing an easier means for the FIX_2 production, in order to increase understanding of the protein’s function within the blood coagulation cascade. The initiation of the blood coagulation cascade is brought on by activation of inactive Factor VIII (FVIII) protein though contact with tissue factor, the FVIII protein then binds to an activated platelet surface where it must wait for its …

Studying The South Lake Whatcom Fire, Lillian Buck

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This study investigates the ecological consequences of the South Lake Whatcom Fire, which occurred in August 2023, focusing on soil health and water quality. Lake Whatcom, historically shaped by indigenous settlements and 19th-century logging and mining activities, is a critical water source for Bellingham residents. The fire, sparked by lightning, was managed with hand-dug lines, and contained by September 2023. Soil analysis revealed a significant reduction in the organic matter/duff layer depth in burned areas compared to unburned sections, highlighting potential challenges for soil recovery and ecosystem health. Erosion concerns were raised, emphasizing the need for post-fire management strategies. This …

Time As A Line: Helping Children Make Abstract Ideas Concrete, Rachel Mae Stenner

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This is a math education project that included research, a lesson plan, and actual in the classroom work with students. Under the advisement of Dr. Rebecca Borowski, I looked into how time, an abstract idea, is taught to young children who are just starting to learn what measurement is, and examined how teachers can better teach time as a more concrete topic. This focused on the idea of turning the abstract time concepts that are thrown at children into the more abstract ideas of both circular and then linear number lines, using physical materials to help guide the process.

Shared Roots: A Geochemical Investigation Of Basaltic Andesites To Understand Magmatic Cogenesis At The Middle Sister And South Sister Volcanoes, Central Oregon, Sean Francis Halstead

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The Middle Sister and South Sister volcanoes, near Bend, Oregon, are overlapping, active Cascade Arc stratovolcanoes which share a complex, contemporaneous eruptive history. This history is characterized by an extreme compositional diversity of lavas erupted in alternating phases of high activity from one neighboring volcano to the other, with both vents producing material ranging from basaltic andesite to rhyolite. This system is understood to be predominantly fed by basaltic andesites fractionated from partial mantle melts within the lower crust, but magma compositions are additionally impacted by mixing, assimilation, and crustal contamination while in transit to the surface. Thus, the subterranean …

An Analysis Of Clinopyroxene Reaction Rims As Assimilation Chronometers At Cinder Cone Volcano, Lassen National Volcanic Park, California, Annabelle Carozza

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Cinder Cone is a monogenetic cinder cone volcano located in Lassen National Volcanic Park, California. It erupted in 1666 CE and had three eruptive phases, each producing tephra and lava flows that ranged in style from Hawaiian (low explosivity) to Strombolian (moderate to high explosivity). This eruptive style variability at Cinder Cone was not caused by viscosity or volatile differences, and ascent rate has been proposed as a causal factor in the observed explosivity difference between phases. Ubiquitous quartz crystals are entrained within tephra and lava and were likely sourced from the assimilation of a granitic basement rock underlying the …

Sound Salmon Solutions, Chloe Lindstrom

College of the Environment Internship Reports

explored the wetland ecosystem of the Edmonds Marsh, and got the opportunity to look into water quality as well. The camp took place at the Sound Salmon Solutions hatchery, which is also known as the Willow Creek Salmon and Watershed Education Center located in Edmonds, Washington. Sound Salmon Solutions works with hands-on stewardship, habitat restoration efforts, and interactive education to expand on the relationship between the environment and people to assist in the recovery of pacific northwest salmon.

The Nature Conservancy And Sca Intern, Kathryn Hoerauf

College of the Environment Internship Reports

The main project we contributed to was the vegetation monitoring program connected to the Port Susan Bay restoration efforts. Most of the summer was spent in the marsh using GPS units to follow various elevationbased transects, gathering plot data, and entering that data into larger Excel spreadsheets. These data contributed to a larger body of data collection that spans almost 10 years, allowing TNC to see measurable change in the marsh related to their efforts to reconnect freshwater supply to the marsh via the Stillaguamish River. Since 2012, TNC has worked with multiple tribal and state agencies to take down …

Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association Camp Educator, Mae Brenneman

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Some of my main objectives from the start of this position were to gain leadership skills in environmental education, learn more about salmon ecology, and apply the knowledge gained in my WWU Environmental Science courses to this internship. In addition to these, I wanted to speak effectively to students about ecology and conservation and gain more knowledge on local environmental issues by working with an organization that strives to support the restoration of salmon habitats in Washington. This position allowed me to meet my learning objectives by giving me an opportunity to lead lessons and develop curriculum in environmental education, …

Institute For Watershed Studies Research Assistant, Savannah Samuelson

College of the Environment Internship Reports

In the summer of 2023, I assisted Kathryn “Katey” Queen, a M.S. candidate in Environmental Science at Western Washington University. Dr. Angela Strecker advises Katey’s aquatic ecological research master’s thesis. This thesis work focuses on the successional development of ponds and surrounding habitats that formed following the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens. The eruption had varied impacts on the surrounding area; closest to the crater where trees were entirely removed, to more distant locations where the force leveled trees, to the outer edges of the blast area where the force was not powerful enough to knock trees down …

Common Threads Farm Internship, Yarelli Barragan

College of the Environment Internship Reports

As part of my Cumulating Experience I wanted to focus on completing internships as a way to expand my academic learning and explore different career paths. I also wanted to gain experiences to make me a competitive employee and someone that can start a future career that I love. Participating in an internship felt like a great way to tackle both of these objectives.

Using Two Coeval Andesites From Middle Sister And South Sister, Oregon, As Clues To Understanding Connectivity Between Adjacent, Coincident Stratovolcanoes, James Peale

Geology Graduate and Undergraduate Student Scholarship

The Three Sisters Volcanic Complex in central Oregon is a cluster of three primary stratovolcanoes and a mafic periphery which lies at the intersection of the Cascade volcanic arc and the Basin and Range extensional province. This project focuses on the two youngest stratovolcanoes, Middle Sister and South Sister. Middle Sister experienced a period of frequent eruptive activity from approximately 27 ka to 14 ka, during which it erupted dacites, andesites, and basaltic andesites. South Sister experienced an intense period of eruptive activity from approximately 36 ka to 22 ka, during which it erupted a diverse suite of magmas ranging …

Understanding Potential Reservoir Interconnectivity Between Two Contemporaneous Volcanoes During The Onset Of Cone-Building Activity, Middle Sister And South Sister, Central Oregon, Emma Calvert

Geology Graduate and Undergraduate Student Scholarship

Klah Klanee (Three Points) is located in the central Cascades near Bend, Oregon. The Three Sisters Volcanic Complex (TSVC) lies at a tectonically complex intersection of the Cascade Subduction Zone, the Basin and Range Province, and the High Lava Plains. The TSVC is a compositionally diverse volcanic field consisting of four stratovolcanoes and numerous periphery cones and vents. Middle Sister and South Sister are the youngest of the stratovolcanoes and they share a largely contemporaneous and semi-alternating episodic eruptive history. These parallel histories could indicate a complex, interconnected magmatic root system within the crust below the TSVC and the surrounding …

Supporting Data For Impact Of The Macrophyte Nymphaea Odorata (Lily Pads) On Dissolved Organic Matter (Dom) In A Lake, Kyle Juetten, Warren J. De Bruyn, Zachary Landram, Aaron Harrison, Angela Strecker, Catherine D. Clark

Chemistry Faculty and Staff Publications

(Files are available for download below.)

This is supporting data for a publication on the role of lily pads in contributing to the dissolved organic matter pool in Lake Louise, a small lake in the Pacific Northwest region of the USA. Specifically, this data includes the absorbance and fluorescence spectra of the Lake Louise water samples (taken weekly over the course of 2018). These files include large spreadsheets with raw and corrected absorbance and fluorescence intensity data as a function of wavelength, as well as the raw and corrected absorbance and fluorescence 3D excitation-emission matrix spectra (EEMs). These files are …

Evaluating Domain Specific Llm Performance Within Economics Using The Novel Econqa Dataset, Tate Van Patten

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper describes a novel dataset, EconQA, constructed to assess the performance of large language models within multiple choice economics questions. I present results from 10 experiments, varying prompts and model choices. Results challenge previous findings that prompt choice makes a large impact on quality of response. Using the GPT 3.5 Turbo model, observed performance levels ranged from 70-77% for all prompt choices, with the no prompt baseline scoring 73%. When prompted to use Chain-of-Thought reasoning with examples, performance was highest at 76%. Contrary to previous research, performance on mathematical questions when prompted with Chain-of-Thought was high. This paper closes …

Interactive Learning With Plankton: Constructing Kiosks For The Sea Discovery Center, Sierra Schuster

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project involved creating two interactive kiosks for the SEA Discovery Center to better engage visitors on their plankton exhibits. HTML, CSS, and ReactJS were used to construct web apps that could be launched in Chromium’s Kiosk Mode upon system boot time so that the application would automatically run, preventing visitors to the Center from gaining access to the computer beyond the main program. They are hosted externally on Western Washington University’s Cyber Range and are run on the kiosk machine by Raspberry Pi 4s that access it via a URL. The informational kiosk was designed to give visitors an …

Double Trouble: Applying Deep Learning To Ebs Systems, Noah Reneau, Hidemi Mitani Shen, Nicholas Chandler, Ian Pourlotfali

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Eclipsing binaries (EB) are fundamental stellar laboratories that can be detected via long-term photometric monitoring. Analyzing the orbital motion of these EBs offers a unique ability to directly measure the parameters of both stars in the system, including masses, radii, and effective temperatures, without relying on theoretical models. Nonetheless, this process is non-trivial, and arriving to a correct solution for a given system can often take significant time. In the ongoing work, we are developing deep learning models capable of providing fast and accurate predictions of these fundamental parameters in these EBs, which will enable the characterization of an increasingly …

Lagrangian Mechanics And The Motion Of A T-Handle, Eric Maurer

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper begins by deriving the equations of motion for the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics. Lagrangian mechanics describes the same thing as the traditional Newtonian mechanics (which is what is taught in most undergrad physics classes), but rather than model the system through forces, it models the system through energy. Energy is conserved in a system, which allows the Lagrangian formulation to model certain types of systems in a more efficient way than the Newtonian formulation.

Next, the paper explores rigid body motion, specifically looking at the motion of the angular momentum. The goal of this part is to explain …

The Role Of Volatile Enrichment In The Radiogenic Heating And Thermal Evolution Of Rocky Exoplanets, Ula Jones, Asmaa Boujibar

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Internal heating in terrestrial planets is a fundamental physical process controlling the internal structure of a planet, mantle convection, volcanic activity, and the generation of magnetic fields. Internal heating results from various processes including radioactive decay and accretional energy, as well as additional irradiation and tidal heating in planets with short orbital periods. The largest long-term heat source for terrestrial planets is radioactive heating, especially from the decay of uranium (U), thorium (Th), and potassium (K) isotopes. K is a moderately volatile element, while U and Th are refractory elements; during planetary accretion volatiles are depleted relative to refractory elements, …

From Filth It Rises Presentation, Griffin Hartz

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project contains the design, development, and partial implementation of a survival horror game made in Unity engine. The highlight of the game's design is the machine learning agents used to create the game's enemy AI, developed with Unity's MLagents system. In the game, the player controls a construction worker who traveled into a sewer to pursue a missing coworker. They eventually find their way into a crumbling undercity where their coworker was trapped, and soon become hunted by the mutant monster that killed their coworker. Their goal is to escape the ruins without being preyed upon by the mutant …

A Change-Point Analysis Of Air Pollution Levels In Silao, Mexico And Fresno, California, Rachael Goodwin

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

We analyzed PM10 levels in the city of Silao, Mexico, as well as PM2.5 and PM10 levels in Fresno, California to determine if there was a shift in air pollution levels in either location. A change point based analysis was used to determine if there was a shift in air pollution levels. In the city of Silao, there was a significant increase in PM10 levels, but there was no significant change in Fresno for either pollutant.

Databases And Deliberation, Britany Orozco, Quentin Jensen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper describes the process taken to build a digital form-collection system in a business context. By starting with the motivation for the project, we can gather the requirements necessary to complete before we can consider the project complete. From there, we start discussing the client-server-database architecture principles that must be reviewed before we can design our database. Database design fundamentals are reviewed, such as what a schema or entity relationship diagram is, and those fundamentals are used to design the database. Next, we show how a development environment is chosen. With the environment set up, we then discuss how …

Investigations On The Active Catalyst In Pd Catalyzed Organic Reactions, Riley Mcgraw

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Cross coupling and C-H functionalization reactions are valuable tools in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, natural products, fine chemicals, and electronics. Molecular precatalysts are frequently used in both reactions but because the reactions use conditions like those employed in intentional preparation of nanoparticles, the presence of nanoparticles is highly likely for both systems. In the case of the cross-coupling reaction, nanoparticles have been shown to have catalytic relevance, but C-H functionalization reactions are widely thought to occur by means of a homogenous catalyst. To better understand the state of the active catalyst, a method of homogeneity analysis by centrifuge is proposed. …

Solving The Genius Square: Using Math And Computers To Analyze A Polyomino Tiling Game, Noah Jensen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper investigates if the claim of the game Genius Square is true, that all 62,208 boards that its dice can roll are solvable. The gameboard is a 6 by 6 grid and the objective of the game is to tile a board that has 7 blockers, quasi-randomly placed by the dice, with 9 polyominoes consisting of 1, 2, 3, and 4 squares. In order to implement a model of linear systems created by John Burkardt and M.R. Garvie, code was developed using Python and Matlab. With this code, it was shown that all 62,208 boards are solvable. The number …