Undergraduate orientation

When I was a freshman (not so long ago... well 4 years) I had a class that was suppose to be an orientation for freshmen. What I recall the most from this class was the professor (who was the head of the department at that time) saying a lot "physics is the science, the rest are details" and claiming that this quote was from Einstein. Anyways, now that I look back, I see all that could have been covered on that class.

Something that needed to be covered was to present physics as the interesting and exciting field that it is. I would have talked about all the interesting work going on at the many national laboratories in the US and around the world. I guess from my point of view, physics sounds interesting. After all it might be a matter of whether the students are not to stubborn. In my year most of the students wanted to change to engineering. They all regarded physics as "hard". To this very day, I still get from people that physics is hard when I tell them about me being a physics graduate student.

I would have mentioned some historical background of important discoveries and advances in physics. For example, the Manhattan project provides a very interesting theme to discuss topics like ethics and working conditions. Other examples would include a small survey of Nobel prizes. The history of Quantum Mechanics would have also been a nice interesting topic, mentioning names like Bohr, Schroedinger, Dirac, Heisemberg and Feynman. Biographical talks would be nice too.

At the freshman level, physics is not that fun. I know some people will disagree with me, but I believe that with no calculus it is hard to go into much details. Still, maybe a survey of the many branches of physics and its topics. An example would be Statistical Mechanics and different species of particles (fermions versus bosons), interacting particles, mention of BECs, importance of the electron gas to Solid State physics, even define what Solid State physics is. A little overview of relativity and the different types of wormholes. Problems in high energy physics. All this maybe to the limitation of just mentioning names and dates... but I think that would be enough to motivate the students to stay in physics and try to go as far as possible.

I good freshman year will give the student the idea that the remaining years in college will be rewarding.