... and so many to go. Today I had my last final examination of the spring semester, on Quantum Mechanics.
Overall it was a fair examination. I think some of the problems involved a significant amount of tedious algebra. I finished 15 minutes early, but I did not worked on the last problem, and I deserved it. The first problem was a harmonic potential along the z- axis define on a square region of the x-y plane, outside this region an infinite potential in the x and y directions. We were asked to find the energy eigenvalues and normalized eigenfunctions, but I could not recall the functional form of the harmonic oscillator eigenfunctions. I learned them at some point and I got used to reading them from textbooks, so I could not remember from the top of my head. Oh well. This makes me a tad annoyed, since the professor did not allowed a formula sheet. If I were stranded on a deserted island with no books or any food, I think the first thing on my mind will be to get something to eat, not doing any physics. But maybe that would be the fundamental difference between me and "the good students"; they choose physics above personal satisfaction.
Anyways, the second problem was about time-dependent perturbation theory. We had a potential that was turned on and was cubic in x and decayed exponentially in time. The system was a harmonic oscillator. We were asked to find the probability to have transitions to any state starting in the ground state. It took me a while to remember the expression for the first order correction, but at the end I think I got it. I was happy with my self, since I was able to write the cubic x term in terms of the creation and annihilation operators and the number operators and this time I got something that was really easy to finish. I remember one homework we had a cubic term and I did not simplified it enough. But thankfully I had the idea to write everything in terms of the number operator and the made it easy to realized only two terms survived. The third problem was two identical fermions in an infinite well potential and we were asked to consider the spatial wavefunction for the triplet and singlet spin states. Finally, the last problems were about a constant potential radial barrier, and we had to answer some questions about phase shifts. I knew this question was coming and guess what? I did not study for it. The last week of classes were really hard on my sleeping, so I was half awake during class; and I just thought it was a complicated topic for an exam. Wrong! None of those is a real reason not to studied. I never learn my lesson, it is a good thing that I could not answer that last question, because I did not deserved to done well.
All is done, I passed Statistical Mechanics with a B+. I finished my finals. I can relax. Meri is coming tomorrow and we might go to New Haven for some exploring. Today I will try to start with my summer self study: Quantum Field Theory, basic String Theory and a big load of Mathematics!
15 May 2007
12 May 2007
Graduate Food
Now that I am finishing with my first year of graduate school, I think I should start writing about my impressions and experiences. I decided to comment first on the food ;-). You see, when you are so busy sometimes you can forget that you need to eat food at least twice a day. I tried having three meals a day. Since there is so little time to cook, I thought of sharing my usual meals and some recipes.
Breakfast
The easiest breakfast by far is cereal. I fluctuated between Frosted Flakes, Honey Nut Cheerios and regular Cheerios; most of the time buying the generic brand. I know, all this are not very healthy. In fact I do not eat that healthy. But I try! Anyway, some mornings I had late classes (10:40 AM), and since I tried waking up everyday at 8 AM, I had some extra time. These days I made scramble eggs with toast, or pancakes.
I am particularly fond of pancakes, they were the cheer-up meal. Usually I just followed the recipe in the box. But of course, one gets pretty tired of things, so I started experimenting. I remember that my father use to add cinnamon to the batter. I also had some oatmeal pancakes during last summer. Combining these with bananas and some vanilla, I came up with banana-oatmeal pancakes. Just prepare the usual pancake batter. Then add two drops of vanilla, a sprinkle of ground cinnamon, and a mashed banana. These were mostly prepared during the weekends, to my loving girlfriend who also loves them ;-).
My girlfriend and I are also very fond of French toast, but again this is a slightly complicated meal that takes a bit of time. So I guess my final advice for breakfast is cereal. If you really are on a hurry, there is always a bagel or a pair of toasts.
Lunch
My lunch is also not that healthy, but I found it very popular among graduate students. In order to force myself to eat some fiber, I have been eating peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches on whole wheat bread. This is money friendly, since with less than $10 you can buy lunch for the whole week. In fact, the jelly and butter will last for a few weeks. Sides include a fruit, mostly a banana, apple or an orange; and sometimes white corn chips. All this drown under a litter of water, all important.
Maybe I will try to experiment with salads during the summer...
Dinners
Dinners are also sometimes rushed. I found that it is best to pack something and heat it on the microwave, than to walk back to the apartment or buy something at the student center. I am pretty sure pasta is the most popular food for graduate students, since it is easy to cook. Well, I am convinced now that pasta with marinara sauce does not saves well. Once you save it in the fridge, the next time you heat it it is very dry and nasty. But pesto saves the pasta, maybe because I love pesto. I had never heard of pesto before I came to the US. Two years ago I had my first basil pesto pasta. I liked it, and I am happy to say it saves well, after a couple of days it still tastes fresh. Just buy a big box of pasta and a jar of traditional basil pesto, boil the pasta, then just add the pesto. You will have three days worth of dinner. I found that helpful, cooking on Sunday night and then not bothering until Thursday night.
Another popular thing is the Mexican tortilla. You can make burritos, quesadillas, etc. Quesadillas are easy to make and are a quick meal. But my favorite are the spinach enchiladas. I learned about these two summers ago, but finally tried them last summer while at Stanford. This is the only dish that has any type of vegetable, I feel bad about that... but they are really good! I guess I add lots of cheese, which is not good for your veins... Anyways, here is the recipe:
Spinach Enchiladas
1/3 of a package of frozen chopped spinach, defrosted of course
ricotta cheese
sour cream
Mexican cheese blend
one can of enchilada sauce
flour tortillas
In a big bowl add the spinach, three spoons of ricotta, one small spoon of sour cream, half of the Mexican cheese blend and a drip of sauce. Mix well. Spread over tortillas and roll. Place enchiladas on a baking pan, maybe you want to add a layer of sauce at the bottom. Cover the enchiladas with a layer of sauce and the rest of the cheese blend. Cover with aluminum foil and bake in the oven at 435.927778 Kelvin for about 25 minutes or until the cheese is melted; you might want to uncovered them so they can get a bit golden. This makes about 4 servings.
You can make enchiladas on a Sunday night and have dinner through Thursday! Other things I tried were rice with frozen vegetables, but that never came out fine. There is always delivery. Here in the Stony Brook area so far I have tried Lan Wo, Chinese food that is cheap and they have SUNY student dinner deals. There is always Domino's and I also tried once a nearby Greek place, but that was a visit. There is an Irish pub, but I asked for a Parmesan sandwich and they brought me a chicken Parmesan pasta, which was not bad, but i was sick of pasta. When I visit Merideth in Boston, we always stop by Anna's Taqueria in the MIT campus. Their chicken quesadillas are just amazing.
Another favorite dish is the pita-bread-pizza. Just take a pita bread slice, spread some tomato sauce and add some mozzarella cheese, then bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or you can also try the microwave oven for about 2 minutes. I just love these!
I am not going to say it is very original, but after some time I decided to sprinkle some Italian garlic seasoning to the top layers of a grilled cheese. The result now is pretty tasty, you might want to try it.
There is not much meat in my usual meals. I found that meat takes longer to prepare, and I have grown comfortable with the simplistic attitude in the kitchen. I love my pork, sometimes I made some pork chops with mashed potatoes. But these were very rare.
Desserts!
This might be a surprised, but desserts might be the thing that can keep you happy through a week of exams, homeworks and grading. Mostly I made brownies. Just follow the recipe on the back of any mix box. I also rediscovered pumpkin pie. Again just follow the recipe in the pumpkin can. Pumpkin pie will also be my holiday dish for March 14th (3/14).
All this made me feel hungry...
Breakfast
The easiest breakfast by far is cereal. I fluctuated between Frosted Flakes, Honey Nut Cheerios and regular Cheerios; most of the time buying the generic brand. I know, all this are not very healthy. In fact I do not eat that healthy. But I try! Anyway, some mornings I had late classes (10:40 AM), and since I tried waking up everyday at 8 AM, I had some extra time. These days I made scramble eggs with toast, or pancakes.
I am particularly fond of pancakes, they were the cheer-up meal. Usually I just followed the recipe in the box. But of course, one gets pretty tired of things, so I started experimenting. I remember that my father use to add cinnamon to the batter. I also had some oatmeal pancakes during last summer. Combining these with bananas and some vanilla, I came up with banana-oatmeal pancakes. Just prepare the usual pancake batter. Then add two drops of vanilla, a sprinkle of ground cinnamon, and a mashed banana. These were mostly prepared during the weekends, to my loving girlfriend who also loves them ;-).
My girlfriend and I are also very fond of French toast, but again this is a slightly complicated meal that takes a bit of time. So I guess my final advice for breakfast is cereal. If you really are on a hurry, there is always a bagel or a pair of toasts.
Lunch
My lunch is also not that healthy, but I found it very popular among graduate students. In order to force myself to eat some fiber, I have been eating peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches on whole wheat bread. This is money friendly, since with less than $10 you can buy lunch for the whole week. In fact, the jelly and butter will last for a few weeks. Sides include a fruit, mostly a banana, apple or an orange; and sometimes white corn chips. All this drown under a litter of water, all important.
Maybe I will try to experiment with salads during the summer...
Dinners
Dinners are also sometimes rushed. I found that it is best to pack something and heat it on the microwave, than to walk back to the apartment or buy something at the student center. I am pretty sure pasta is the most popular food for graduate students, since it is easy to cook. Well, I am convinced now that pasta with marinara sauce does not saves well. Once you save it in the fridge, the next time you heat it it is very dry and nasty. But pesto saves the pasta, maybe because I love pesto. I had never heard of pesto before I came to the US. Two years ago I had my first basil pesto pasta. I liked it, and I am happy to say it saves well, after a couple of days it still tastes fresh. Just buy a big box of pasta and a jar of traditional basil pesto, boil the pasta, then just add the pesto. You will have three days worth of dinner. I found that helpful, cooking on Sunday night and then not bothering until Thursday night.
Another popular thing is the Mexican tortilla. You can make burritos, quesadillas, etc. Quesadillas are easy to make and are a quick meal. But my favorite are the spinach enchiladas. I learned about these two summers ago, but finally tried them last summer while at Stanford. This is the only dish that has any type of vegetable, I feel bad about that... but they are really good! I guess I add lots of cheese, which is not good for your veins... Anyways, here is the recipe:
Spinach Enchiladas
1/3 of a package of frozen chopped spinach, defrosted of course
ricotta cheese
sour cream
Mexican cheese blend
one can of enchilada sauce
flour tortillas
In a big bowl add the spinach, three spoons of ricotta, one small spoon of sour cream, half of the Mexican cheese blend and a drip of sauce. Mix well. Spread over tortillas and roll. Place enchiladas on a baking pan, maybe you want to add a layer of sauce at the bottom. Cover the enchiladas with a layer of sauce and the rest of the cheese blend. Cover with aluminum foil and bake in the oven at 435.927778 Kelvin for about 25 minutes or until the cheese is melted; you might want to uncovered them so they can get a bit golden. This makes about 4 servings.
You can make enchiladas on a Sunday night and have dinner through Thursday! Other things I tried were rice with frozen vegetables, but that never came out fine. There is always delivery. Here in the Stony Brook area so far I have tried Lan Wo, Chinese food that is cheap and they have SUNY student dinner deals. There is always Domino's and I also tried once a nearby Greek place, but that was a visit. There is an Irish pub, but I asked for a Parmesan sandwich and they brought me a chicken Parmesan pasta, which was not bad, but i was sick of pasta. When I visit Merideth in Boston, we always stop by Anna's Taqueria in the MIT campus. Their chicken quesadillas are just amazing.
Another favorite dish is the pita-bread-pizza. Just take a pita bread slice, spread some tomato sauce and add some mozzarella cheese, then bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or you can also try the microwave oven for about 2 minutes. I just love these!
I am not going to say it is very original, but after some time I decided to sprinkle some Italian garlic seasoning to the top layers of a grilled cheese. The result now is pretty tasty, you might want to try it.
There is not much meat in my usual meals. I found that meat takes longer to prepare, and I have grown comfortable with the simplistic attitude in the kitchen. I love my pork, sometimes I made some pork chops with mashed potatoes. But these were very rare.
Desserts!
This might be a surprised, but desserts might be the thing that can keep you happy through a week of exams, homeworks and grading. Mostly I made brownies. Just follow the recipe on the back of any mix box. I also rediscovered pumpkin pie. Again just follow the recipe in the pumpkin can. Pumpkin pie will also be my holiday dish for March 14th (3/14).
All this made me feel hungry...
11 May 2007
Happy Birthday, Mr. Feynman
On this very day, 89 years ago (according to Wikipedia) Richard Phillips Feynman was born. Feynman was natural of Far Rockaway, which is located to the west of Stony Brook, here in Long Island.
Most physicist will tell you that Feynman was one of the best scientist of all time. He was part of the Manhattan Project, where the first atomic bomb was developed. Independent of the final purpose of this weapon, the Manhattan Project was an important and unorthodox scientific project. As a physicist, Feynman contributed to the development of the theory behind Quantum Electrodynamics and developed a diagrammatic approach to calculation that now bears his name. He also had important insights into areas such as elementary particles, computation, nanotechnology and statistical physics.
Last summer I read Feynman's biography by James Gleick. It was a wonderful read. The first thing I did after I finished reading it was to buy the Feynman Lectures. I really admire Feynman, he was really special. But sometimes I wonder whether he was really like that or whether most of his doings were exaggerations by people. In the end I do not care. Once I met somebody that actually had met Feynman. I asked this person how Feynman really was. The person just look to the sky, smiled and said "Oh he really was something...". That was the only thing he said.
Sometimes I feel like it is a bit silly to admire somebody that much. I guess (in general) people think they could be like them, they could attain all the fame and glory that a given famous have had. Well the truth is that there was only one Feynman. Nobody else can be him. And sometimes it is a bit hard to even try to be like them. What I am trying to say is that the best thing that can be done is to be honest with yourself and say: "Hey, Feynman was awesome, but I am not Feynman and should not even pretend to accomplish what he did". I want to say this, because I feel like I tried to accomplish many things that people around me where doing for some time. Maybe I am still doing some of that.
When I was in high school I remember everybody wanted to be an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer or a psychologist. I did not had an idea what an engineer did, I only knew that it had to do with NASA and space travel. When I was younger I wanted to be an astronaut too, but I think that is more common. Anyways, I remember hearing about the subject "physics", I had to take it during my 11th grade but there was some problem in my school and my class ended up taking biology as the science class. Along that same time line, I remember that I had one of those test about professions and interest. I do not remember what was my result, by I remember reading about all the descriptions for different areas. I had liked the chemistry class, but for some reason I enjoyed more the atoms and electrons part than the whole chemical balance and solutions, etc. Physics was described as something along the lines of "the study of matter and energy and their interactions". For some reason this reminded me of Albert Einstein, I guess because of his most famous equation. So I read on my encyclopedia about Einstein work, and about physics in general and found everything very interesting. And above all nobody else was interested in doing physics. So I felt good about it.
On my 12th grade I finally took my first course in physics, which was a bit disappointing. Around that same time the news of a child prodigy from a nearby town started appearing. At the time he was eleven years old, just finished high school and was going to start college to pursue a degree in physics. I remember that the first thing that came to my mind was hate, I hated him for being ahead of my and for being all smart. Then I realized that there was no real reason for me feeling this way, so I change my attitudes. Still, I continued with my interest in physics and now I wanted to attend the same university the prodigy was attending so I could meet him. It was not until my second year of college that I finally met him. To my surprise I was taking a course with him. And as it turned out, I took mostly all my physics courses with him. During the first few days it was very bad. He was quick and answered most of the professor's questions. Most of the times I did not even had time to consider the question at hand and think of how to answer it. I remember that I concentrated on getting better, just for the sole purpose of beating him. Thankfully it was not to late before I realized I was doing the wrong thing.
Pushing yourself hard just to be better than somebody else is the worst think that one can do. Along the way it makes you act in ways you never thought of behaving. In the end I realized that there was a fundamental difference between the prodigy and I, and that I should not care about his progress but care about my own. It worked well most of the time. We became good friends, just as life should be. I think life should not be about who is the best, but about what individual people accomplish and the importance of everybody's contribution.
In graduate school I found myself monitoring others still. Haven't I learned my lesson? Why is it so hard to disregard other people's progress, and just concentrate on yourself? I guess in the end one wants to success in life, and the fear of not doing so takes over everything else. My ideal state of mind is to fully concentrate on my own progress and flaws, and disregard others. It is not about ignoring, no. I want to have friends and celebrate their own success. But I do not want to compare myself with others. It is just a waste of time and energy (to conjugate variables).
Well, I wanted to talked about Feynman. At the same time I mentioned a bit bout idols and comparing yourself with others. Maybe later I will write some more on this topic.
Two final exams, two silly mistake
Well I feel accomplished! Yesterday night I did my last chunk of grading of the spring semester. I had my Statistical Mechanics final exam yesterday morning too. It went better than I expected, considering the fact that I had been doing pretty bad on the partial exams and on some of the homeworks.
There were three problems. The first problem was to consider an ideal spin-0 boson gas. We were asked to find an expression for the chemical potential, and then decided whether you can achieve Bose-Einstein condensation with that system. It was a straight-forward calculation. In the end I found that there could not be any condensation. The second problem was a two-cite Ising model. We were asked to find the susceptibility and the energy variance. At first I started to freak about about the susceptibility, since I had to calculate the average spin. But then I found an expression for the average spin; it was just the derivative of the free energy, which can be found easily with the partition function. Then I completely forgot that I wanted the susceptibility and carried on to the next part. This was my first silly mistake. I had to provided low and high-temperature behavior of the susceptibility and instead provided the analysis for the average spin. Oh well! The last problem was to consider a weakly damped one-dimensional harmonic oscillator. We had to find the spectral densities for the spatial coordinate and the momentum coordinate. I tried something, but to be honest I never fully understood this last part of the course. Partly because I did not cared (and I should have cared), and partly because It was something new and I felt it was a bit rushed (I know, that is a very lame excuse). Overall, I hope to pass the course, at least with the minimum. I have worst things to think about next semester...
But it was not until today early morning, around 2:12 AM, that I realized my second silly mistake. The Electrodynamics final exam had been on the day before yesterday. Again, three problems. The first was an easy question. My professor is an experimentalist, he works with x-rays at the National Synchrotron Light Source. In day during class he asked us what was the wavelength of one photon with an electronvolt of energy. It turns out that this is related to an expression that involves three fundamental constants: Planck's constant h, the speed of light c , and the elementary charge e. The answer is 1239.8 nm. The second problem was to reproduce the calculation of the electromagnetic fields of a charge particle in motion. The idea was to consider a charge moving with constant velocity along the x-axis and to calculate the field at a fixed point along the y axis by considering the fields in the rest frame of the particle and then Lorentz- transforming to the lab frame. It was straight forward. Finally the last problem was about an electric dipole that was rotating along the x-y plane with a given angular frequency and we were asked to calculate the radiation fields and the angular distribution of the radiated power. This expressions involve a unit vector from the source to the observer. Usually this unit vector is a position vector divided by its magnitude. But no sir, the gentlemen writing to you on this cloudy afternoon decided that the unit vector was just the sum of three unit coordinate vectors. For starters that is not even a unit vector! Everything depended on that unit-vector, so of course everything came out wrong; my power distribution was uniform... I did not realized what my mistake was until after a day. What makes me most angry is the fact that I knew it had to be wrong. But I continued on, lying to myself. It all sucks. Oh well, I had been doing better at E&M, so I expect to pass this class too.
Next Tuesday I have my last final, Quantum Mechanics. I hope I do not have to writ about my third silly mistake.
There were three problems. The first problem was to consider an ideal spin-0 boson gas. We were asked to find an expression for the chemical potential, and then decided whether you can achieve Bose-Einstein condensation with that system. It was a straight-forward calculation. In the end I found that there could not be any condensation. The second problem was a two-cite Ising model. We were asked to find the susceptibility and the energy variance. At first I started to freak about about the susceptibility, since I had to calculate the average spin. But then I found an expression for the average spin; it was just the derivative of the free energy, which can be found easily with the partition function. Then I completely forgot that I wanted the susceptibility and carried on to the next part. This was my first silly mistake. I had to provided low and high-temperature behavior of the susceptibility and instead provided the analysis for the average spin. Oh well! The last problem was to consider a weakly damped one-dimensional harmonic oscillator. We had to find the spectral densities for the spatial coordinate and the momentum coordinate. I tried something, but to be honest I never fully understood this last part of the course. Partly because I did not cared (and I should have cared), and partly because It was something new and I felt it was a bit rushed (I know, that is a very lame excuse). Overall, I hope to pass the course, at least with the minimum. I have worst things to think about next semester...
But it was not until today early morning, around 2:12 AM, that I realized my second silly mistake. The Electrodynamics final exam had been on the day before yesterday. Again, three problems. The first was an easy question. My professor is an experimentalist, he works with x-rays at the National Synchrotron Light Source. In day during class he asked us what was the wavelength of one photon with an electronvolt of energy. It turns out that this is related to an expression that involves three fundamental constants: Planck's constant h, the speed of light c , and the elementary charge e. The answer is 1239.8 nm. The second problem was to reproduce the calculation of the electromagnetic fields of a charge particle in motion. The idea was to consider a charge moving with constant velocity along the x-axis and to calculate the field at a fixed point along the y axis by considering the fields in the rest frame of the particle and then Lorentz- transforming to the lab frame. It was straight forward. Finally the last problem was about an electric dipole that was rotating along the x-y plane with a given angular frequency and we were asked to calculate the radiation fields and the angular distribution of the radiated power. This expressions involve a unit vector from the source to the observer. Usually this unit vector is a position vector divided by its magnitude. But no sir, the gentlemen writing to you on this cloudy afternoon decided that the unit vector was just the sum of three unit coordinate vectors. For starters that is not even a unit vector! Everything depended on that unit-vector, so of course everything came out wrong; my power distribution was uniform... I did not realized what my mistake was until after a day. What makes me most angry is the fact that I knew it had to be wrong. But I continued on, lying to myself. It all sucks. Oh well, I had been doing better at E&M, so I expect to pass this class too.
Next Tuesday I have my last final, Quantum Mechanics. I hope I do not have to writ about my third silly mistake.
02 May 2007
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.
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.
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