physics

Leanne Pitchford

Leanne Pitchford is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Leanne Pitchford rather than just read about it. In short: Leanne Carolyn Pitchford (born 1950) is a retired physicist known for her work on the numerical modeling of low-temperature plasma, and in the LXCat project for open exchange of low-temperature plasma data. Educated in the US, she worked in France as a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated with the Laboratoire Plasma et Conversion d’Energie (Laplace) at the Un…

Key takeaways

Leanne Pitchford belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Leanne Pitchford to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Leanne Pitchford from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Leanne Carolyn Pitchford (born 1950) is a retired physicist known for her work on the numerical modeling of low-temperature plasma, and in the LXCat project for open exchange of low-temperature plasma data. Educated in the US, she worked in France as a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated with the Laboratoire Plasma et Conversion d’Energie (Laplace) at the University of Toulouse.

Education and career Pitchford majored in physics and mathematics at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M University–Commerce), graduating in 1970. She went to the University of Texas at Dallas for doctoral study in physics, completing her Ph.D. there in 1976. Her dissertation, Development of a Quantitative Model for High Power Pulsed Lasers, was supervised by Carl B. Collins, and concerned gas lasers. After postdoctoral research at CEA Paris-Saclay in France and at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) at the University of Colorado Boulder, she became a researcher and department manager at Sandia National Laboratories from 1980 to 1988. In 1989, she moved to CNRS and Laplace, where she remained for the rest of her career.

Recognition Pitchford received the CNRS Silver Medal in 1999. She was one of two recipients of the 2015 Von Engel & Franklin Prize in plasma physics, given at the International Conference on Phenomena in Ionized Gases for her "outstanding contributions to the physics and technology of ionized gases, the understanding of the processes that take place in dielectric barrier discharges, the study of spaceship propulsion systems and in the construction of basic data benchmarks for ionized gases". In 2018, the American Physical Society (APS) gave her their Will Allis Prize for the Study of Ionized Gases, "for the development and application of methods to accurately compute rate coefficients and charged particle transport coefficients, and their application to predictive modeling of low-temperature plasmas". She was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2019, after a nomination from the APS Forum on Industrial & Applied Physics, "for outstanding service to the industrial and applied physics communities in the area of low-temperature plasma modeling through the development of new approaches for solution of the electron gas Boltzmann equation, modeling software, evaluated data sets, and open-access websites". She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

References

External links Leanne Pitchford publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Leanne Pitchford

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Leanne Pitchford claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Leanne Pitchford before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Leanne Pitchford ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Leanne Pitchford

In research: Leanne Pitchford appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Leanne Pitchford in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Leanne Pitchford is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1950 births, 21st-century American women scientists, 21st-century French women scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Leanne Pitchford outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Leanne Pitchford in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Leanne Pitchford means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Leanne Pitchford out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Leanne Pitchford in simple terms?

Why does Leanne Pitchford matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Leanne Pitchford?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Leanne Pitchford.