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

9/24/04

• Seniors’ Study Group

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

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?

ProposalRequire that a student has completed the Introductory Physics sequence (PHY 13x or equivalent)with a grade of C or higher before he/she is acceptedinto the PHYSICS Major program.

Status of Plans for Bachelor of Arts in Physics

Last year’s discussions crystallized in concrete proposal

This year’s discussion has questioned advantages ofinstituting a B.A. in Physics:

• Prospective clientele is not clear• It is doubtful that it’ll 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

• 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

Physics and Computation for Undergraduates

What is the outside world doing?

What are we doing?

AST/PHY 277: Intro. to Unix/Program./Num. Analysis 1-credit, elective course

• Introduction to Unix– basic file manipulation commands

– editing files

– working remotely

• Introduction to Fortran 90– integer & floating point arithmetic

– real & integer variables and expressions

– basic conditional & loop structures

– static arrays

– basics of subprograms

• Rudimentary numerical techniques– Trapezoidal rule integration

– Basic least-squares fit

– Newton-Raphson iteration

– Euler's method for ODEs

• Computer literacy– more extensive tour of Unix

– graphics & visualization applications

– makefiles

– LaTeX

– HTML

– IDL/Mathematica/Maple/Matlab

– symbolic manipulation

• Programming – Complex variables & strings

– Formatted I/O

– allocatable arrays & dynamic memory allocation

– All of F90 & procedural parts of C++

– pointers in F90, C, C++

• Numerical Methods– Greater detail of numerical integration,

root-finding, ODE methods– Intro to Monte-Carlo methods

In 1-credit course we teach: In 3-credit course we could add:

AST 277/PHY 277

The undergraduate curriculum committee proposes:

1. Make PHY277 a requirement for PHY major (it already is for AST)

2. Expand AST/PHY277 syllabus and make it a 3-credit course

3. Encourage students to take AST/PHY277 in Sophomore year

4. Encourage upper-division instructors to include numerical problems in their assignments