Physics BS

Major: Physics
Degree Awarded: Bachelor of Science (BS)
Calendar Type: Quarter
Minimum Required Credits: 180.0
Co-op Options: Three Co-op (Five years); One Co-op (Four years); No Co-op (Four years)
Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code: 40.0801
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code: 19-2012

About the Program

Drexel’s Bachelor of Science in Physics degree provides a solid foundation in physics suitable for graduate study or to branch out into other scientific or technical disciplines. The physics program offers an innovative curriculum in a top-notch learning environment: small class sizes, personal input from faculty, and close interaction with researchers who are leaders in their fields. Students explore the span of universal phenomenon—from the farthest reaches of astrophysics and cosmology, to molecular biophysics and subatomic particle physics— providing a solid foundation for continued study and exploration. Most undergraduates actively participate in research projects, including co-authoring publications and presenting results at conferences.

Virtually every course in the physics major is designed to extend the students' ability to manage real-world challenges using cutting-edge technology, critical thinking and analysis skills. An important feature of the program is the large number of electives, which allow a student to pursue topics of special interest. There are numerous elective courses in areas as diverse as biophysics and cosmology, nanoscience and particle physics. Students can also choose electives to meet teacher certification requirements.

The Laboratory for High-Performance Computational Physics is a venue for students to become proficient in numerical techniques, parallel processing, electronic communication, and the basic computer languages and software relevant to advanced studies and research in physics.

The Department of Physics conducts a broad array of outreach activities including the Kaczmarczik Lecture Series, public observing nights at the Lynch Observatory, and demonstrations in grade school performed by the Drexel Chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) and the Women in Physics Society (WiPS).

In addition to the physics major, the Department also offers a minor in physics as well as a minor in astrophysics and a minor in biophysics.

The Physics Department is dedicated to equity and inclusiveness, and strives to be a welcoming environment to students of all races, backgrounds, genders, and orientations.

Physics Cooperative Education

Drexel’s renowned cooperative education program encourages students to gain up to three six-month periods of full-time employment to explore career options, gain hands-on experience in their fields of interest, build their resume and foster a professional network.

For more information about Drexel's physics program contact Luis Cruz Cruz, PhD, Associate Department Head for Undergraduate Studies; Associate Professor ccruz@drexel.edu

Degree Requirements

*

Additionally, PHYS courses at the 400 level or higher (excluding courses which already satisfy a Physics major requirement) will be included.  Other closely related upper division courses in other programs may be included at the discretion of the Physics Department. Only 2 courses may be applied which are offered outside of the PHYS subject code.

**

Co-op cycles may vary. Students are assigned a co-op cycle (fall/winter, spring/summer, summer-only) based on their co-op program (4-year, 5-year) and major. 

COOP 101 registration is determined by the co-op cycle assigned and may be scheduled in a different term. Select students may be eligible to take COOP 001 in place of COOP 101.

Students not participating in co-op will take one additional credit of Free Elective instead of COOP 101.

***

Any course at the 100-499 level in the following subject codes: ACCT, BLAW, BSAN, BUSN, ECON, EGMT, EHRD, ENTP, FIN, HRM, HRMT, INTB, MET, MGMT, MIP, MIS, MKTG, OPM, OPR, ORGB, REAL, REMD, SMT, STAT, STS, TAX, and TVIE. 

†

Any course at the 100-499 level in the following subject codes: AFAS, ANTH, ARBC, ARCH, ARTH, CHIN, CJS, COM, ENGL, FMST, FREN, GER, GST, HBRW, HIST, HUM, IST, ITAL, JAPN, JWST, KOR, LANG, LING, MENA, MUSC, PHIL, PHTO, PPE, PSCI, PSY, RELS, SCRP, SCTS, SPAN, SOC, THTR, TVST, VSCM, WGST, and WRIT.

‡‡

Technical electives can be any course in BIO, CHEM, ENVS, GEO, MATH, PHYS, or any course from the College of Engineering.

Astrophysics Concentration

The Astrophysics concentration is available only to Physics majors. The PHYS requirements listed below simultaneously satisfy some of the Physics electives required for the major.

Biophysics Concentration

The Biophysics concentration is available only to Physics majors. The PHYS requirements listed below simultaneously satisfy some of the Physics electives required by the major while the BIO and CHEM courses also fulfill either Free or Technical electives.

Writing-Intensive Course Requirements

In order to graduate, all students must pass three writing-intensive courses after their freshman year. Two writing-intensive courses must be in a student's major. The third can be in any discipline. Students are advised to take one writing-intensive class each year, beginning with the sophomore year, and to avoid “clustering” these courses near the end of their matriculation. Transfer students need to meet with an academic advisor to review the number of writing-intensive courses required to graduate.

A "WI" next to a course in this catalog may indicate that this course can fulfill a writing-intensive requirement. For the most up-to-date list of writing-intensive courses being offered, students should check the Writing Intensive Course List at the University Writing Program. Students scheduling their courses can also conduct a search for courses with the attribute "WI" to bring up a list of all writing-intensive courses available that term.

Sample Plan of Study

5 year, 3 co-op

*

COOP 101 registration is determined by the co-op cycle assigned and may be scheduled in a different term. Select students may be eligible to take COOP 001 in place of COOP 101.

**

In addition to the listed Physics electives, PHYS courses at the 400 level or higher (excluding courses which already satisfy a Physics major requirement) will be included.  Only 2 courses may be applied which are offered outside of the PHYS subject code.

***

For students pursuing graduate study only; other students add an additional credit of free elective.

4 year, no co-op

*

In addition to the listed Physics electives, PHYS courses at the 400 level or higher (excluding courses which already satisfy a Physics major requirement) will be included.  Only 2 courses may be applied which are offered outside of the PHYS subject code.

**

For students pursuing graduate student only; other students add an addition credit of free elective.

4 year, 1 co-op

*

COOP 101 registration is determined by the co-op cycle assigned and may be scheduled in a different term. Select students may be eligible to take COOP 001 in place of COOP 101.

**

In addition to the listed Physics electives, PHYS courses at the 400 level or higher (excluding courses which already satisfy a Physics major requirement) will be included.  Only 2 courses may be applied which are offered outside of the PHYS subject code.

***

For students pursuing graduate study only; other students add an additional credit of free elective.

Co-op/Career Opportunities

Students who complete a degree in physics have many options. Some enter graduate school with the intention of obtaining a master’s or a PhD. Others attend medical school. Engineering is yet another option, and graduates of an undergraduate physics program can enter this field with an unusually solid background in fundamental physical principles, mathematics, and computation. It is also possible for physics graduates to work in business and finance; for example, Wall Street employs many analysts trained in such “hard sciences” as physics.

Many Drexel physics graduates proceed directly into graduate schools, or medical or other professional programs. Physics graduates have attended some of the best graduate programs in the United States, including Columbia, Harvard, and CalTech. Other graduates have found jobs in engineering and business, and with such government agencies as the National Bureau of Standards.

Co-op employers for physics majors include:

• Lockheed Martin
• Princeton Plasma Physics
• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
• Harvard University
• MIT
• University of Pennsylvania
• Academy of Natural Sciences
• Brandywine Photonics
• National Board of Medical Examiners
• Philadelphia Water Department
• C. & J. Nyheim Plasma Institute
• II-VI Optical Systems
• Comcast Corporation

Visit the Drexel Steinbright Career Development Center for more detailed information on co-op and post-graduate opportunities.

Facilities

Astrophysics Facilities:

• The Numerical Astrophysics Facility emphasizes theoretical and numerical studies of stars, star formation, planetary systems, star clusters, galaxy distributions, cosmological modeling, gravitational lensing, and the early universe. The facility employs a high-performance Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) compute cluster, each node containing two 6-core, 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon CPUs and 96 Gbytes of RAM, accelerated by 4–6 Nvidia Fermi/Titan GPUs, and connected by QDR infiniband, affording computational speeds of up to 50 trillion floating point operations per second.
• The Joseph R. Lynch Observatory houses a 16-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope equipped with an SBIG CCD camera. 
• Drexel is an institutional member of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) that will be conducted with the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, currently under construction in Chile as a joint project of the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy.  Faculty and students are developing LSST-related machine learning tools and analyzing simulated LSST data to prepare for "first light" in 2022.

Biophysics Facilities:

• Bio-manipulation and microscopy laboratories. Four optical tables and six research grade microscopes are configured to perform microscopic spectroscopy and manipulation on solutions and individual cells. A spatial light modulator allows spatial patterns to be encoded on samples and explored; all microscopes are temperature controlled with state of the art cameras, including a 2,000 frame per second high speed system. Each optical table is also equipped with high power lasers for photolysis or fluorescence spectroscopy.
• Wet lab for studies of proteins and biomimetic lipids, and protein purification and characterization. The laboratory has a variety of chromatographic equipment, large and small centrifuges, fume hood, a spectrophotometer and a spectrofluorimeter. In addition, the laboratory houses a small microfluidic fabrication facility.
• The Computational Biophysics facility also includes: (i) a Beowulf cluster with 46 dual Quad-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU (736 cores) and 12Gb of RAM nodes plus a master with 1Tb of storage and 24Gb of RAM, (ii) a Beowulf cluster with 44 dual-core Xeon CPU (344 cores),(iii) a dual Quad-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU workstation with 24Gb RAM and 3Tb disk with two Tesla C2050 GPU CUDA-accelerated graphics card, (iv) a dual Quad-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU workstation with 8Gb RAM and 4Tb disk with an NVIDIA N280 GPU CUDA-accelerated graphics card, (v) a quad 8-core hyperthreaded Xeon CPU workstation with 128Gb RAM and 16Tb total disk, (vi) a 72Tb file server with 12Gb RAM, (vii) a 96Tb quad 6-core file server with 64Gb RAM, (viii) and several Linux workstations connected through a gigabit network.

Condensed Matter Physics Research Facilities:

• The Energy Materials Research Laboratory includes a Variable Temperature UHV Scanning Probe Microscope for studies of 2D correlated electron materials and quantum systems.
• Ultrafast Structural Dynamics Laboratory includes a transient electron diffraction setup with sub-picosecond temporal resolution used in studies of quantum materials.
• Single crystal growth laboratory utilizes different techniques for growing high quality single crystals of strongly correlated materials including dichalcogenides.
• The Magnetic Material Laboratory conducts research on amorphous magnetic thin films and fiber optical sensors.
• The Surface Science Laboratory has several scanning probe microscopy setups to study surface structure interfaces at the atomic level.
• The Ultra-Low Temperature Laboratory has a cryogenic dilution refrigerator and microwave sources and detectors to study quantum phenomena in nano- and microscale devices, superconducting qubits, nanostructures, and quantum fluids and solids.
• The Mesoscale Materials Laboratory investigates light-matter interactions and the extent and effects of ordering of lattice, charge and spin degrees of freedom on electronic phases and functional properties in solids, with an emphasis on bulk and epitaxial film complex oxides. Facilities include instrumentation for pulsed laser deposition of epitaxial complex oxide films, atomic layer deposition, variable-temperature characterization of carrier transport (DC to 20 GHz), and a laser spectroscopy lab enabling high-resolution Raman scattering spectroscopy at temperatures to 1.5 K and under magnetic field to 7 T.
• Condensed Matter Physics group has active collaborations with DOE Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago (visiting faculty Dr. Valentyn Novosad) with numerous experimental capabilities available at the Materials Science Division and Center for Nanoscale Materials. Graduates students in experimental condensed matter physics have an opportunity to conduct part or all of their thesis research at Argonne as part of collaborative projects with the research groups there.
• Local high performance computing facility.
• The Experimental Condensed Matter group is actively utilizing local user facilities at Drexel (Core Research Facilities (https://drexel.edu/core-facilities/facilities/material-characterization), University of Pennsylvania (Singh Center for Nanotechnology (https://www.nano.upenn.edu), and Temple University (Science and Education and Research Center (https://cst.temple.edu/research/SERC)  to access top of the line instrumentation for nanoscale fabrication and characterization of materials.
• Faculty in Condensed Matter Physics thrust participate in several large-scale collaborations such as Energy Frontier Research Center (DOE EFRC--CCM), detector development for South Pole Telescope Collaboration and others.

Particle Physics Facilities:

• The Drexel Particle Physics Group researches fundamental neutrino properties with the DUNE long baseline experiment hosted by Fermilab and the PROSPECT short baseline reactor experiment, as well as the planned nEXO neutrinoless double beta decay experiment.
• We are also active in the IceCube neutrino telescope located at the geographic South Pole.
• The Bubble Chamber Laboratory develops superheated-liquid detectors for rare-interaction searches, including the PICO dark matter experiment located at SNOLAB in Canada.

Laboratory for High-Performance Computational Physics:

• In addition to the department computing cluster (15 Linux workstations), high-performance computing resources include a dual-processor server with two Xeon E5-2650 processors (16 cores), 128 GB of RAM, and two Xeon Phi P5110 co-processor cards (480 cores). Department researchers also have access to a cluster of 18 Dell PowerEdge C6145  servers (AMD Opteron 6378 Piledriver CPU's, 64 cores/server, 256 GB RAM/server) with a total of 1152 cores and 4.5TB RAM.

Program Level Outcomes

Physics Faculty

Emeritus Faculty