A quote from William James about passion and science.
Instructor/Course Organizer: Jim Napolitano
Teaching Assistant/Grader: Chao Li
All lectures are held on Thursday afternoons from 4pm until 4:50pm in Low 3051.
| Date | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 28 Aug | Jim Napolitano | Course Introduction (No writeup required) |
| 4 Sep | Peter Persans | Old Optical Tricks to Study New Materials |
| 11 Sep | Paul Stoler | The Standard Model of Particle Physics |
| 18 Sep | Joel Giedt | Strings and Lattices |
| 25 Sep | Sang-Kee Eah | Monodispsersed Nanoparticles |
| 2 Oct | Wayne Roberge | Shock Waves: Things that Go Bang in Space |
| 9 Oct | Leo Schowalter | Ultraviolet LED's or My Excellent Adventure Starting a New Business |
| 16 Oct | Mimi Katz | From Phytoplankton to Mammals: Evolutionary Trajectories Linked via the C Cycle |
| 23 Oct | Ken Connor | Plasma Physics |
| 30 Oct | Selmer Bringsjord | Since Physicalism is False, We Need More Than Physics |
| 6 Nov | Heidi Newberg | Your Textbook is Wrong about the Milky Way |
| 13 Nov | Gyorgy Korniss | Dynamics in Networks |
| 20 Nov | Shengbai Zhang | Physics and Energy Research |
| 4 Dec | Angel Garcia | Calculating What Makes Things Alive |
Welcome to A Passion for Physics! You should be able to learn a lot in a very relaxed setting, and the course requirements are minimal.
This course serves several purposes. First, it introduces you to the research done in and around the Physics Department at RPI. Second, it is an opportunity for you to interact with our faculty in a seminar setting, so ask questions of the speakers. A third goal, since most of you are freshman physics majors, is to give you a chance to meet with each other at least once a week.
There are two course requirements. One is attendance. You need to sign an attendance sheet that will be passed around at the start of each lecture. Secondly, you need to submit a writeup describing the day's lecture. This writeup should be less than a page long, no more than two or three paragraphs. Your writeup is due, by email to the grader, no later than by 8am on the Monday following the lecture. (This includes Monday, October 13, Columbus Day, when there are no classes.)
You may email your writeup directory to the grader, Chao Li, either simply as text in the body of the email, or with some attachment in a standard file type. Please avoid "docx" files, i.e. the most recent MS Word format.
This course is graded "Pass/Fail." In order to pass the course, you are allowed no more than one unexcused absence or missing writeup.
Please avoid waiting until the last minute to submit your writeup. (If some server goes down at at 7:58am on a Monday morning, you will be out of luck.) In fact, I encourage you to take notes during the Thursday lecture on your laptop, and submit it right after class is over.
Sometimes the lecture for the day will be posted on this website, but not always. If you would like to contact the speaker and ask questions about their research and presentation, please do so! Faculty are generally looking for interested undergraduates who may want to participate in a research project.