Physics as a career, 1

After graduating from UPR - Mayagüez and earning a Bachelor in Science (with concentration on theoretical physics), one of my professor sat down with me and asked me some questions. The only one I will talk about was something like "how would you attract first year students?"”

The department of physics is infamous for its relatively low requirements for acceptance. Colegio is most famous for the engineering schools, and most students in Puerto Rico want to become engineers. Still, most of these students do not know what engineering is about and fail in their studies. Because of their popularity, all the engineering programs in Mayagüez have the highest requirements. Students that failed to get into an engineering program choose (most of the time) to start in the physics department and then change. The process of changing is something that can be done, but really not well accomplish by most students. Hence the department of physics has a certain amount of students that do not want to be there.

When I was in high school, for a time, I wanted to be an engineer. But later I realized that I did not knew what engineering was about. Instead I choose physics, with "“the study of energy and matter, and their interaction". And I follow that interest to this day, just graduating and becoming a graduate student at Stony Brook University. As a student I saw, first hand, how engineering students hated physics and math. Some thought that it was all a waste of time; that old people were really bored to come up with all this topics of forces and momentum, electricity and magnetism, etc. I pity them, because they do not knew what engineering was about.

So what is it about? Some say it is about learning physics and coming up with ways of how it can help. Then you throw in all that cost efficient crap to make it more "“realistic"”. But in the core it is just that. You need to learn and understand physics if you want to become an engineer. There is no escaping.

Of course, physicist also study how can physics help. They have come up with important inventions. So by this measure, one cannot tell what the difference between a physicist and an engineer is. Others say it is the approach they take to solve a problem. I heard the following example from a physicist from Purdue University who came to UPR-M once.

Some company wants to know how to determine the content of containers without opening them. Some engineers suggested drilling tiny holes and measuring. The physicist suggested using some form of spectroscopy to learn, with opening, the content of the containers.

So you see the difference in approach.

My view is that a physicist learned the fundamental concepts of nature. They are able to understand the principle behind things, in general, and gain a wider view of problems. On the other hand, an engineer basically is taught applications of all this principles, so one can say that to certain extent an engineer only works with specific problems. This is not completely true, but it serves as a good approximation.

Ok, so how should I attract more students to physics? This is not about painting physics as fun and exciting. Physics IS fun and exciting, but not to everybody. Some people just do not like science. This group of people enjoys some other things, like music, art, philosophy. It is part of diversity. A larger group does not like science because they have had bad experiences and frustrations. This is the kind of person that can be "“attracted"” to the department of physics.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the feeling I get every time I learned something new in the classroom, or some new experiment in the lab. Physics tries to understand how nature works. All the current theories explain some common phenomena, but also take us to realms such as near stars or black holes, and atoms and the elementary particles that make them. When you learn physics (and you search for physics) you gain the "knowledge" or understanding of how nature manifests itself.

That is the joy of physics, to me.

A physicist also has more "“freedom"”, if they choose to work in the academic. But then again, it all depends of ones view of freedom. Also physics students can go into engineering schools safely, having been exposed to a wide variety of areas. On the other hand, an engineering student most likely does not understand anything about relativity or quantum theory.

So yeah, just talking about what you could learn. Not promising anything fancy like company cars, beach houses, etc.

That is my way of attracting students. What about after graduation? Stay tuned.