The Physics & Astronomy Department welcomes all new and returning students to a pizza party. Tuesday, Sept. 12, 4pm, room A011. We'll see you there!
Physics and Astronomy senior Cailin Plunkett is this year's winner of the Mary Dailey Irvine Award for a distinguished thesis in the Five College Astronomy Department. Her thesis, “Population Properties of Protoplanets: Quantifying Completeness in the Presence of Accretion", and her oral presentation, were considered exemplary by the Prize Committee.
Students take advanced courses in areas such as electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and classical dynamics.
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The joint Five College Astronomy Department offers the benefits of a liberal-arts education while maintaining association with researchers of international stature.
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The telescopes on the Science Center's George I. Alden Trust Observation Deck are available for coursework, open houses, and general student use.
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With laboratories, observatories, computer labs, a machine shop and an electronics shop, students have many opportunities to get hands-on experience in physics and astronomy.
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Many of our majors go on to some of the best graduate programs in physics, astronomy and related areas. Others enter careers ranging from medicine to science writing to secondary-school teaching.
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The department holds weekly seminars and colloquia on current research topics. The talks are accessible to students.
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Physics instruction at Amherst began in 1821. Experimental physics took off in 1952 and has included many notable faculty and students.
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In this course we will explore how the fields of extragalactic astronomy and cosmology emerged and continue to evolve, and will touch on many of the big unanswered questions in these fields
Newtonian Synthesis is a major intellectual development of the seventeenth century. We'll explore the implications of this synthesis by combining Newton’s dynamical laws with his Law of Universal Gravitation.
We'll investigate vector and tensor fields, study geometric ideas (geodesics, parallel transport, and covariant differentiation), and present the Principle of Equivalence as the central physical principle behind Einstein's theory of gravity.
A team of six students from across several fields of study spent part of the summer assembling Eugene, a soccer-playing robot for the 2018 American Society of Mechanical Engineers Student Design Competition.