This description was prepared in February of 2000 for the Undergraduate Academic Bulletin. For the most current description of this major, please see the department or program's web site. Physics and astronomy are fundamental sciences aimed at discovering the basic principles that govern our universe.
Physicists study the interplay between space, time, matter and energy.
Complex behavior in nature is explained in terms of elementary relations between constituent elements and the forces that bind them. The phenomena examined by physicists occur over distances ranging from subatomic scale, as in nuclear and elementary particle physics, to human scale, as in condensed matter physics, to cosmic scale, as in astrophysics and cosmology. In both physics and astronomy, new instruments and technologies are revealing unexpected phenomena that present exciting scientific challenges. The basic tools in physics and astronomy are mathematics and experimental investigation and observation of the world around us. The forte of a physicist or astronomer is the ability to analyze and reduce a complex problem into basic concepts.