ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT

Come for the physics, stay for the toys!

Ride a hovercraft and build a balloon helicopter to understand Newton's laws. Play air hockey, ride roller blades and imitate ice skaters to understand conservation principles. Make your own lightning and build your own electric generator to explore electricity and magnetism. Create rainbows out of light waves and build your own laser to learn how waves interact. Send a single simultaneously through two different doors and watch it interfere with itself to reveal the quantum world. Use an infrared thermal imaging camera to reveal hidden footprints, check your circulation and improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Measure and capture solar energy to put your physics into practice in the service of sustainability. Make your own hologram, experiment with electronics, test the theory of relativity and re-enact the big bang. Carry out leading-edge research on your own, or in collaboration with Smith faculty. The physical universe is full of toys—be a part of the fun!

In our department we have one nuclear theorist, one nuclear experimentalist, two condensed matter experimentalists, one optics experimentalist, and one theoretical/computational cosmologist. This range of topics gives you a wide variety of opportunities to participate in physics research, starting from your very first year here at Smith. Smith physics majors have the opportunity to do research both here at Smith and at a wide variety of national and international research facilities, and regularly present their research results at conferences and in published articles in leading scientific journals. In the last ten years we have supervised over 100 research students—why not join them?

"Microfluidics: Drop Production and Deformation"
Tuesday, November 17, 2009, from 5 to 6 p.m.
McConnell 103 (Auditorium)
A talk by Molly Mulligan '05, graduate student of engineering at the University of Massachusetts. Refreshments served at 4:45 p.m. More information >

"Science at the Center"
Wednesdays, from 12:50–1 p.m., through November 18
McConnell Lobby
Join us for a 10-minute, informal presentation of an idea and/or a demonstration on a topic of interest to the speaker. More information >

Physics Fest 2009
View a photo gallery of this year's Physics Fest >