Johan Larson emails a suggestion for a post topic:
How many profs would it take to offer a good, but not necessarily excellent, undergraduate physics degree?
I can give you an empirical answer to this: Six.
I say that because in the course of my undergraduate physics degree at Williams, I took classes from only six different professors. Five-and-a-half, really, because one of those was half of a team-taught course. I had three-and-a-half classes with one professor, and two others for two classes each.
Of course, that’s not a hard lower bound. Some have even suggested that the number could be as low as one (Garfield, ca. 1870, though it’s not clear how much Mark Hopkins knew about physics). Other small-college folks may be able to claim smaller numbers.
Of course, that’s a slightly flippant answer to a question that really boils down to “How many different areas of physics do students need to learn from experts in that area?”
That’s a little harder to answer, because it’s not clear that, for example, first-semester classical mechanics really needs to be taught by an expert in classical mechanics. Likewise introductory E&M and sophomore level modern physics. So there could be a lot of “doubling up” in the teaching of the curriculum.
I would say that a good, solid undergraduate degree in physics should see students learning the following topics well:
- Electricity and Magnetism at the level of Griffiths’s book
- Quantum Mechanics also at the level of Griffiths’s book (Townsend would be a bonus)
- Classical Mechanics at the level of… I used Baierlein, which is out of print. I think we use Fowles at Union
- One good course in Thermo/ StatMech… Kittel was the book we used
(Special Relativity is also worth seeing, but doesn’t require a full semester– you can mix it in with classical mechanics and E&M and sophomore-level QM.)
The first three of those probably require two semester-length courses each, so that’s seven semesters worth of teaching, but probably really only requires three faculty (I wouldn’t do both semesters of the two-course subjects with the same person). A typical academic major requires more like 10-12 courses, which leaves three courses for “Special Topics” like Condensed Matter/ Solid State Physics, Quantum Optics, Nuclear and Particle Physics, Relativity/ Cosmology, Classical Optics, Electronics, and so on. That leaves two more for undergraduate research, which I would regard as essential preparation.
The research is probably the limiting step, because anybody who can teach special topics can probably also teach one or more of the required core. You’re probably looking at about three faculty minimum if you just worry about course work, but depending on how many students you have in the department, you probably need more than that to handle research advising.
That’s a half-assed guess at an answer, anyway. It’s not my ideal arrangement of classes, mind, but if you stripped things down to the lowest possible level, that’s what you’d get.
Do all of these courses need to be taught by different instructors (presumably each an expert in that area)? I graduated from Union with a math degree two years ago and am now working on a PhD. I expect that by the time I finish my PhD I will have a good enough understanding of each of the major areas of mathematics to teach an undergraduate level course on each, even though I’ll be focusing on one area in my research. Does this mean a good mathematics department could consist of just me? (Okay, that sounds awfully arrogant when I put it that wayâ¦)
So could a physics professor whose area of expertise is quantum mechanics still teach, say, electricity & magentism at a high undergraduate level?
Doesn’t 10-12 courses for the major usually also include one or two semesters of introductory sequence before you get to your outline? I think two semesters of E+M and QM, one semester of Lagrangians/Hamiltonians, one semester of thermo/stat mech (this would be a better place to spend an extra semester than classical mechanics, but neither is necessary) on top of two introductory courses is a perfectly serviceable physics major. I would like to think that most professors could teach any of those courses. Thus the number of people you would need seems dictated by constraints on what professors are likely to find to be acceptable teaching loads, how often you need to offer the courses based on typical number of majors, etc.
I am pretty ambivalent about undergraduate research. It’s obviously a nice resume builder, but I’m not sure if an undergrad thesis is a good enough approximant to full-time research to really give people a clear idea about whether it’s for them or not, especially in the context of undergraduate only institutions.
Man, 10-12 courses seems like so few. During my Physics undergrad in Canada I took 23 semester length physics courses (required for my degree) as well as 2 astronomy courses. Though one of them was my honours thesis, so make it 22….still, that didn’t seem like enough to me! There was lots of stuff I wish was offered or could have taken!
So could a physics professor whose area of expertise is quantum mechanics still teach, say, electricity & magentism at a high undergraduate level?
Almost certainly.
As a general matter, I would avoid having too few people teaching, just because it can be helpful to see a different take on the same subject. Different professors will approach the same material differently, and it’s possible that one might work better for some students than others. If you take both E&M courses from the same professor, and he or she happens to be one whose approach works less well for you, that could be a problem.
Doesn’t 10-12 courses for the major usually also include one or two semesters of introductory sequence before you get to your outline?
Those are the first terms of Classical Mechanics and E&M in my scheme. I’m imagining one semester of Halliday and Resnick level, followed by one semester of Griffiths (or whatever your favorite texts are).
I am pretty ambivalent about undergraduate research. It’s obviously a nice resume builder, but I’m not sure if an undergrad thesis is a good enough approximant to full-time research to really give people a clear idea about whether it’s for them or not, especially in the context of undergraduate only institutions.
I wouldn’t be where I am without undergraduate research, so I’m a big fan.
Man, 10-12 courses seems like so few. During my Physics undergrad in Canada I took 23 semester length physics courses (required for my degree) as well as 2 astronomy courses.
Keep in mind, I come from a liberal arts college background, so my normal mode of thinking involves students who are taking humanities and social science courses outside the major. I took a total of 32 semester courses in all fields as an undergrad, of which 12 were physics (there were also four month-long “Winter Study” courses, but I’m not counting those). The maximum possible number I would have been allowed to take in a single department (due to college requirements) would’ve been 25, I think, but Physics didn’t offer that many classes for majors (I might’ve been able to get another 4-5 by taking astronomy courses, but that would’ve been it).
At Union, our students take 36 trimester courses (generally), and again, are required to do something like 8-10 courses in departments other than their major. I don’t think it would be possible to take more than about 18 courses in Physics over a typical four-year span.
(I’m not counting math courses required for the major in this, by the way– those are taught by the Math department, and would use different faculty.)
My BSc in the UK covered a lot more stuff than that, but then UK degrees are more focussed. Nevertheless, don’t you need a at least few mathematical methods courses as a complement to all that stuff, or would you be happy to teach calculus, linear algebra, special functions and Fourier analysis at the same time as the physics applications? I think it makes more sense to separate them out, so that you can focus on the main physical principles in the physics courses.
” I’m imagining one semester of Halliday and Resnick level,…”
Wow – their text is still used? I started in 1974 and used what must be a very early edition: I still have it: cost me $12.74, and used it for 2 semesters. I’m guessing the current version costs a bit more.
Back on focus: the same idea: I double majored in math and physics, and had 6 different faculty through my four years, more in my math courses. However, the question under discussion here was discussed among faculty and grad students when I was in graduate school. No number was obtained, but the consensus was that once you got past the basic courses, the more voices a math major was exposed to, the better. Why wouldn’t that be true in physics? Does it boil down to the fact that large mathematics faculties cost less to support than a large physics faculty?
The number I came up with when I considered this question for my own field, computer science, was five.
Small differences aren’t all that significant for this question. I say five; you say four; who cares? But it would be interesting to hear someone argue for a radically different estimate like one or ten.
I know of an instance where a 4 person department produced some graduates of very high quality. I have no idea what they did with mediocre students, but the ones who had the potential to earn a PhD came to grad school extremely well prepared.
We had three physics profs, but our grads did not typically go on to grad school, at least in the era I was there.
What it means to be a good degree may depend on the person.
But the lower bound is generally agreed to be what you said
CM, EM, QM, and SM. These courses can be taught by a single professor. However, a good undergrad education should include a chance for students to explore further, and deeper.
1) Deeper subject level
2) Experimental Physics
3) Research Project/ Data analysis/ Computational
So, I’d say we need at least 4 professors. The best is if we can do multiple topics to try them all out so I’d say about 7.
I think I have had at least 16 and counting.
I did my Physics degree at Wesleyan, and had 8 professors, if I remember correctly. I was also in one of the last classes that Ralph Baerlein taught before he retired. It’s sad to hear his book is out of print, he was a great teacher. His textbook on light for non-majors is also excellent, he used it for the first part of his class on Special Relativity.
six ?
part of a education in basic physicsis
12 courses by only six perspectives
six in five fields, well that’s normal
But if you have the same professor for several courses then you have a big problem
Ralph Baerlein he was a great teacher….and if not?