PDF (1941) - CaltechCampusPubs

STUDY AND RESEARCH AT THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE 117
GRADUATE WORK
Graduate students should complete as soon as possible the courses
required for admission to candidacy for the doctor's degree. (See
pages 15 6-164.) These provide an unusuaI1y thorough grounding in
the fundamentals of physics, and the student learns to use these
principles in the solution of problems of all kinds. In general, also,
graduate students should begin research during their first year and
continue it through their whole graduate period.
The Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics is equipped to carry
on research in all the principal fields of physics. It provides 65 rooms
for research in addition to class and lecture rooms, the physics library,
offices, laboratories for advanced and undergraduate instruction,
shops, switchboard, apparatus, storage-battery, and machinery rooms.
Equipment for making liquid air, hydrogen, and helium has been
installed, and liquid air and liquid hydrogen are available in sufficient
quantities for low temperature researches. Special facilities for research
in the field of radiation are provided in the W. K. Kellogg
Laboratory of Radiation and the High-Potential Research Laboratory
with their million-volt transformers and high potential x-ray
equipment. In both laboratories important work in nuclear physics
and various phases of high-voltage x-rays is being carried on.
The student may either select his own problem in consultation with
the department or may work into some one of the research projects
already under way. The list of "Publications of the Staff" on pages
128-143 of this Catalogue may be consulted for information regarding
the type of work in progress. The average yearly output of the
laboratory for many years has been from fifty to sixty major papers.
There are two general seminars or research conferences per week
which are regularly attended by all research workers and all graduate
students. In addition, there is a weekly theoretical seminar conducted
for the benefit of those interested primarily in mathematical physics
and several seminars on special fields of work such as "X-Radiation,"
"Nuclear Physics," "Metals," "Physics of Solids," and "Ultra-Short
Electromagnetic Waves."