They develop friendships with peers, faculty, and staff which extend beyond graduation. It combines observational and experimental grappling with nature to get the facts of behavior, with the creative synthesis of these facts into theories and laws of nature, often beautiful in their simplicity and universality. More specifically, physics includes the study of the fundamental particles that make up nuclear particles, of electromagnetic, gravitational, atomic and nuclear forces, of energy, of light and heat, of electronics and the structure of materials, of the interiors of the earth and the stars. Our faculty came here to teach and do research. Several faculty members have research projects involving students.
Physics majors get to know each other very well.
They develop friendships with peers, faculty, and staff which extend beyond graduation. We have two medium-power lasers, which greatly increase our capabilities in modern optical studies, including Raman spectroscopy and nonlinear optics. The department has a well-equipped clean room with laminar flow hoods, evaporative and ion beam sputtering chambers, and high temperature ovens for thin film research. A dedicated networked computer houses an SPM image library for K-12 education purposes. We have easy access to both mainframe and microcomputers.