PDF (1941) - CaltechCampusPubs

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CALlFOR:-.!IA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
PHYSICS
UNDERGRADUATE WORK
The distinctive feature of the undergraduate work in physics at
the California Institute is the creative atmosphere in which the student
at once finds himself. This results from the combination of a
large and very productive graduate school with a small and carefully
selected undergraduate body.
Since the best education is that which comes from the contact of
youth with creative and resourceful minds, the members of the staff
of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics have been from the
beginning productive physicists rather than merely teachers. The
instruction is done by the small group method, twenty to a section,
save for one rather elaborate demonstration lecture each week
throughout the freshman and sophomore years. All the members of
the staff participate in these lectures and almost all give at least one
undergraduate course. The entering freshman thus makes some
contact in his first year with practically all of the members of the
staff, and he has the opportunity to maintain that contact throughout
his four undergraduate years, and his graduate work as well, if he
elects to go on to the higher degrees.
In order to provide the thorough training in physics required by
those who are going into scientific or engineering work, two full years
of general physics are required of all students. Those who desire to
major in physics take during their junior, senior and fifth years intensive
problem type courses that provide a more than usually thorough
preparation for graduate work. For those who do not expect to go on
into graduate work, an "Applied Physics Option" is provided, in
which some of the mathematics and problem courses are replaced by
engineering subjects. Many of the undergraduate students who elect
physics are given also an opportunity to participate in some one of the
thirty to sixty research projects which are always under way in the
Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics, and the graduate seminars are
open to undergraduates at all times.