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Facilities
Located in the Olin Hall of Science, the Department of Physics
and Astronomy has received grants from the Amoco Foundation,
Kresge Foundation, the
Peter Kiewit Foundation, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,
and has established an endowment fund to maintain and enhance
department equipment. Department laboratories are equipped
with state-of-the-art instruments and computers that support
student research and learning in a variety of fields: optics,
classical dynamics, radiation detection and theories of small-scale
structures as well as applications in control systems, radon
detection, atmospheric and hydrologic modeling, trace element
analysis and pollution detection and modeling.
Olin Hall houses a well equipped ten station
electronic measurement laboratory and a modern radiation measurement
laboratory with a wide array of detection systems. These labs
have networked computers at each station and additional computers
are available in several computing laboratories in the building.
Olin Hall is also home to the Jensen Planetarium, which boasts
an A-3 Spitz projector capable of displaying one-third of
all the stars visible with a telescope, along with the moon
and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn;
it can also simulate the sky from any latitude. The observation
deck on the roof contains four portable telescopes: a 14-inch Ritchey-Chretien; an 8-inch
Schmidt-Cassegrain; a 6-inch Cassegrain; and a 4.5-inch field
Newtonian.
Extracurricular Opportunities
Physics majors are active in both the Society of
Physics Students and the local chapter of the national physics
honorary, Sigma Pi Sigma. Faculty members also strive to provide
students with current information on graduate schools and
career opportunities by maintaining close contact with both
alumni and graduate school professors.
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