BS in Physics

Physics is much more than the study of matter and energy, it involves understanding all aspects of the world and universe. Research by physicists has repeatedly profoundly changed our understanding of how humans relate to the Earth and to the Universe, and are likely to cause further profound changes in the future. Current experiments such as Kamiokande (studying properties of neutrinos), gravitational wave detectors, the Large Hadron Collider, the Kepler earth-finding telescope, satellites measuring the cosmic black body radiation, telescopic probing of stellar and galactic black holes, and associated theory motivated by these and other experimental efforts all are likely to produce insights that greatly change our understanding of the universe. As one example, just think of the chain of discoveries starting with Galileo, who first used a telescope to observe the heavens and discovered that the leading beliefs that all objects in the sky orbited the Earth, and that all objects in the sky were perfect spheres were wrong. Then came Newton who showed theoretically that the intricate motions of various objects in the Solar System could be understood by his universal law of gravity together with his laws of motion. This was the first time that humans realized that it was possible to understand in precise detail phenomena that occurred beyond the Earth's surface, and further that there was a surprising simplicity and elegance to the laws of nature, and these same laws describe what happens on Earth.