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Best physics programs colleges
Are you interested in a job that's out of this world? Wanting work that will take you to new heights or launch you on thrilling adventures--on this planet and beyond? Studying physics could be your ticket to a cool career. You don't have to be the next Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein to put physics to good use. If you have ever coasted downhill on a bike, flown a paper airplane, gazed at the stars, or thrown a baseball, you have already used physics in the "real world."
People who study physics investigate how matter (solids, liquids, and gases) interacts with energy. They research everything from the big bang to new ways to generate electricity. Plenty of other people, too, put the laws of physics to work every day--sometimes without even thinking about it. Read on to see how to take physics beyond your textbook to land a job you love.
EYE ON THE SKY
COLLEEN SCHWARTZ, astophysicist, Santa Barbara, Calif. Not so long ago, in a high school not so far away, Colleen Schwartz dreamed of being an astronaut. But after taking courses in astrophysics at Colby College in Maine, she shifted her focus to a place where humans can't travel--nurseries where stars are born. "It's a big mystery when and how all the stars in the universe formed. I look at nearby galaxies to try to figure it out," she says.
As an astrophysicist, Schwartz aims huge telescopes from places like Hawaii and Arizona toward distant light from newborn stars. She then analyzes the starlight to reveal how a star's inner building blocks came together to form a giant, glowing ball in space that we see as a tiny twinkling light. "I use Newton's laws, but I also use more complicated calculations," Schwartz says, crediting her high school physics teacher for giving her a strong start. "We use math and physics to describe the universe. Learning problem-solving skills got me where I am, and that's an important part of high school physics," she says, adding that for her, physics only got more interesting the more she studied it. Schwartz started out as a research intern at the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket, Mass., where she learned the basics of doing research and presenting research results.
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"We are all made of stars," says Schwartz, who wrapped up her Ph.D. in physics in 2005. "I am helping us understand how we got here, but also how the universe is evolving."
PHYSICS FOR KIDS
GRETCHEN WALKER, education program manager, American Museum of Natural HIstory, New York City
Teaching physics has taken Gretchen Walker in many directions. She's taught high school physics and put on planetarium shows. She now focuses on teaching science in museums.
Walker was 8 years old when the physics bug bit her. "I visited Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City, and I fell in love with astronomy," she says. "Later I realized that astronomy is applied physics." As a student at Smith College, Walker discovered another interest: teaching. "I'm interested in how to figure something out and pass that knowledge on to someone else," she explains. Walker went on to earn a master's degree in science education from the University of Maryland. "I learned physics as an undergrad, but then I went to graduate school to find out how I learned about physics in the first place," she says.
Today, Walker puts her passion for physics and education to work at the American Museum of Natural History. She figures out interesting ways to teach kids about physics concepts when they join a museum workshop or an afterschool program. Because Walker writes proposals to get funding for her programs, great writing skills are a key to success in her position. Her current project, Train the Next Generation, is funded by NASA and has kids studying the features of Mars, speculating about the possibility of life on other planets, and observing the sun's motion in the sky. By finding exciting opportunities for kids to learn about physics, Walker may well be helping train the next generation of scientists--and paving the way for some surprising new discoveries in the future.
PREPARING FOR TAKEOFF
CAPT. NANCY MARTIN-BELITZ, pilot,s Southwest Airlines Phoenix, Ariz.
When Southwest Airlines captain Nancy Martin-Belitz throttles a 737 down the runway for takeoff, she's thinking about physics. "An aircraft gets off the ground by the lift created by the difference in air pressure above and below the wing," Martin-Belitz says, explaining that flying a commercial plane involves planning the most fuel-efficient trip possible. "I don't specifically think of mass times velocity, but I have to understand how many miles per every thousand feet to descend, consider weight, when to add flaps to induce drag. If you think about flying an aircraft, every bit of it has to do with physics."
An amateur pilot since age 16, Martin-Belitz earned bachelor's degrees in aeronautics and aviation from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. But, she notes, "you could get your degree in history and still become a pilot." Anyone with a pilot's license and the required flight hours can fly a plane. Martin-Belitz flew commuter planes, corporate jets, cargo freights, and an air ambulance to log the 2,000 hours needed to wear a Southwest pilot's uniform.
A WILD RIDE
TIM JACOBI, designer of amusement park rides/mechanical engineer, S&S Power, Logan, Utah
Imagine yourself on a roller coaster zooming straight down 400 feet or on a giant swing swooping back and forth at 60 miles per hour. That's what ride designer Tim Jacobi does at work. It may sound like daydreaming, but Jacobi actually figures out the physics of amusement park thrill rides.
"I do energy calculations, looking at gravity and velocity. I couldn't do any of it if I didn't understand basic high school physics," he says, explaining that he relies on physics to engineer exciting--and safe--rides. "Engineering is applied physics. There's really a lot of overlap."
Jacobi has wanted to design rides since he was in the eighth grade. As a teenager, he went on a "roller-coaster road trip," roaming the eastern United States and riding as many as seven roller coasters a day for a week. He studied mechanical engineering at Yale and built his resume by working as a ride designer in Italy and a mechanic at several amusement parks. Jacobi began graduate studies in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, but temporarily put academics on hold to take his "dream job" at S&S Power, an amusement ride design firm in Utah. "If I'd finished the master's program, I wouldn't have gotten this job. I had been trying for several years, and they only hire every so often," he says.
Last year, Jacobi had the opportunity to finally hop onto one of his own rides, a swing ride called Rush in Surrey, England. "It was totally awesome. It was also pretty surreal," he says. "It was a good feeling to see people getting off the ride and cheering and having a good time." Jacobi says that thrilling the riders is one of the biggest perks of his job.
RELATED ARTICLE: Where I Went with physics.
MY FATHER IS A PHYSICIST WHO juggles. When I started juggling as a teenager, we used to joke that juggling is a practical demonstration of the principles of physics. The joke became increasingly practical as I began to get jobs entertaining at events around New York City. After college, I became the first woman to win the International Jugglers' Association Championship. In juggling, as in physics, female practitioners are rare but increasing in numbers.
I perform in a show called Lazer Vaudeville. My husband, Carter Brown, juggles in the show and designs some of the laser programs. We teach and rehearse at the Boulder Circus Center in Colorado.
As a young juggler, I had many mentors, but I often had to figure out patterns and practice techniques for myself. While learning to juggle three clubs, I practiced to the beat of a metronome. I discovered the answer to a question I ask students when we perform in schools: How can we juggle faster? "Speed up your hands," they sometimes suggest, or "Throw harder." Actually, since the rate of acceleration is constant, the height of the throws dictates the speed of the pattern. Jugglers generally learn with slightly higher throws and lower the pattern as their hands learn to move faster. Dwell time--the time an object stays in the hand--also decreases as jugglers advance their skills.
In the 1940s, when the International Jugglers' Association started, some of the first computers were used to calculate the trajectories of tossed objects. In the 1970s, Claude E. Shannon created juggling machines, or robots, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and proved a theorem relating the position of the balls to the movement of the juggler's hands.
Juggling has become increasingly mathematical since I started in 1980. I juggled three balls when I was 13, four at age 14, five when I was 15, six at 16, seven at 17--and I still practice seven. Call it the law of diminishing returns, but the difficulty of juggling increases exponentially every time another object is added. Site swap, a system in which strings of numbers describe juggling patterns based on the height and timing of the throws, has yielded many variations. Computers can now generate new tricks that are fun to learn.
Tony Duncan, a champion juggler and an astrophysics major who coached me when I was a teenager, is working on a piece in which the balls illustrate the parameters of quarks. At my father's retirement party, I performed an act based on the properties of recursive integers. In juggling, as in physics, the wonders are endless!
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COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
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