Physics and Astronomy Undergraduate Program

1
Physics and Astronomy Undergraduate Program

• Topics for Discussion
• Status of Plans for Bachelor of Arts in Physics
• Computing for AST and PHY majors PHY277
• Requirements for Declaration of PHY Major

• Seniors Study Group

9/24/04
2

• Seniors Study Group for GRE preparation
• volunteer faculty needed
• areas
• Mechanics (2)
• Electromagnetism and Optics
• Atomic Physics
• Thermal Physics
• Quantum Physics
• just once, during Campus Life, from now to
  mid-November

3
Requirements for Declaration of PHYSICS Major
Current situation

• We sign on anyone who walks in and declares
• Physics as his/her major, regardless of
  interests
• or history of courses taken.
• We have 114 PHY majors but we graduate around 15
• Prospective engineering majors keep coming in to
  be signed on

To sign on students whose interests are
elsewhere, Does it benefit the Physics and
Astronomy Department? Is it right?
Proposal Require that a student has completed the
Introductory Physics sequence (PHY 13x or
equivalent) with a grade of C or higher before
he/she is accepted into the PHYSICS Major program.
4
Status of Plans for Bachelor of Arts in Physics
Last years discussions crystallized in concrete
proposal

• This years discussion has questioned advantages
  of
• instituting a B.A. in Physics
• Prospective clientele is not clear
• It is doubtful that itll attract more students
• It may reduce the number of B. S. Physics majors
  who
• take the B.S. track
• It may require the introduction of new courses,
  which is
• not a good economics decision
• It is not clear how much other institutions have
  
• benefited from a B.A. program

Proposal Take a closer look one more time to
more institutions, before
settling issue definitively
5
Physics and Computation for Undergraduates
What are we doing?
AST/PHY 277 Intro. to Unix/Program./Num.
Analysis 1-credit, elective course
What is the outside world doing?

• Some schools have comparable courses, but at
  higher level
• Rutgers, Intro. to computer-based
  experimentation and physics computing (4)
• Utah, Intro. to Computing in Physics (4)
• Oregon State, Introductory Scientific Computing
  (3)
• U. of Virginia, Fundamentals of Scientific
  Computing, (3)
• U. Arizona, Computational Physics (3)
• Notre Dame, Scientific Programming (3)
• UC Irvine, Intro. to C Numerical Analysis (3)
• Case Western, Computational Methods in Physics
  (3)
• Washington, Introduction to Computational
  Physics (3)
• Other schools have computer science course
  requirements (Introductory programming in
  Fortran, C, or C) at the 3 credit level
• Still other schools have upper division
  computational physics courses that had
  programming prerequisites

6
AST 277/PHY 277
7
The undergraduate curriculum committee proposes

• Make PHY277 a requirement for PHY major
• (it already is for AST)
• Expand AST/PHY277 syllabus and make it a 3-credit
  course
• Encourage students to take AST/PHY277 in
  Sophomore year
• Encourage upper-division instructors to include
  numerical
• problems in their assignments