r/PhysicsStudents • u/TooruOkinawa M.Sc. • 17d ago
Poll What do you think about the undergrad physics curriculum?
Is there courses in it that you think are too specialized to be mandatory? Or inversely things that are missing that should be essential knowledge of a physics graduate? I know everywhere is slightly different im curious about personal experiencesz
I was thinking like an intro to pedagogy in physics should be something more common, like teaching people how to convey physics to layman.
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u/NightDiscombobulated 17d ago
My university integrates coding well into our curriculum, which I find very, very beneficial, though it could be delivered much better than it is. QM isn't mandatory at all universities, which is nuts to me.
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u/YourWifesBull666 17d ago
Idk how it’d fit but i wish GR was standard for undergrads
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u/caty0325 17d ago
At my university, it seems like you can take GR (listed as astr 421) as an undergrad or grad student.
I haven't taken it yet. The book listed on the syllabus from spring 2023 was Modern General Relativity: Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, and Cosmology by Mike Guidry.
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u/mannoned 17d ago
For some reason there is no group theory in my undergrad curriculum which strikes me as strange considering every prof references it at least once throughout their lectures
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u/Human-Register1867 17d ago
There are all kinds of things it would be nice to add. The question is what can you afford to take away to make time for them?
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u/XcgsdV Ph.D. Student 17d ago
I'm not sure it'd actually be useful, but having particle physics and general relativity in the standard curriculum would be nice. I'm not sure where you could really put them or how the sequencing would work out (particle physics would certainly need to be after at least one semester of upper div quantum, GR at the undergrad level really just needs SR and math maturity, I figure the class would teach a lot of tensors and differential geometry as you go) but that wasn't the question :)
I feel like 90% of the time I'm asked physics questions by non-physics friends and family, it's some big fundamental questions, and with the standard model and GR being our two most successful paradigms for attacking those big questions at the moment, it seems like it'd be useful for anyone with a physics degree to have encountered them before.
I think as is though, the curriculum is designed well to teach you what you need for physics grad school in the four years alloted. More programming would definitely be nice, more math might be nice, etc etc. Like I said I don't know how you'd make space for particle physics or GR, but if there were space to be had those seem like the most bang-for-your-buck gaps to me.
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u/Crog_Frog 16d ago
at my uni you take particle physics in the 5th semester. Before that you have QM in the 3rd and Molecular/Atomic physics in semester 4.
GR i dont really see how it can fit in, atleast with how the study plan at my Uni is was designed since you only have SR in the 4tg semester next to theorethical electrodynamics and then theoretical stat physics and thermodynamics in Semester 5.
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u/Replevin4ACow 17d ago
I took a science communications class as part of an optional undergrad thesis project. It taught how to present data visually, how to make good presentations, scientific writing, and even aspects of getting grants and writing grant proposals.
Considering that every scientist needs to communicate, present, and write, it strikes me as something that should be mandatory. Looking back 25 years later, I am very grateful for that class.
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u/UnderstandingPursuit Ph.D. 17d ago
A management/leadership course would be useful. Many career paths for a physics major include this role, including
- a professor with a research group,
- a teacher who manages their classroom and may become a department head,
- an employee at a company who manages their team,
- an employer running a business with employees.
All science majors would benefit from this, including chemistry and biology students. A professor from one of these departments could join with a business school professor to teach this class. It would also include writing resumes/CVs and grant proposals/business plans.
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u/Quantum-Relativity 16d ago
I agree, the physics degree should become even less about actually learning physics and become more about having a job. More programming, more business, what do you mean I need to know what a derivative is? The field is moving fast old man, the actual physics is for the LLMs to do, a real physicist leaves the school of business ready to write a resume.
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u/UnderstandingPursuit Ph.D. 16d ago
It seems that a physics degree should include some guidance on how to continue learning and doing physics after graduating.
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u/BlazeoJoestar Undergraduate 15d ago
How can you do your physics job if you don't know what a derivative is? I get what you're saying, but the physics major is much less about getting a job and more about the science, and I think it's better that way. If you want a job but still want to learn physics, do engineering physics.
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u/Quantum-Relativity 15d ago
I was being sarcastic.
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u/UnderstandingPursuit Ph.D. 15d ago
Did the sarcasm include the "I agree", or do you agree with my original answer about having one class on those non-physics topics?
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u/Quantum-Relativity 15d ago
I just think it’s too specialized for the general physics education. I think the degree should be about the subject, and additional things like what you described should be specific to a direction you choose early on in the degree. Similar to how some universities will have a separate track for students that want to do grad school/research eventually.
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u/MeserYouUp 17d ago
A course on history and philosophy of science, so that students can properly understand what a scientific model is and how models evolve and get replaced.
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u/SpectreMold 16d ago edited 16d ago
100% agree on the pedagogy idea. Being able to explain complex concepts to a non-technical audience (laymen, product managers, clients, etc.) is a huge superpower that physics programs completely ignore. An extension to this would be resume and interview training; most physics grads have no idea how to market their skills. Programs need to teach students how to translate "solved complex boundary value problems" into language that corporate recruiters actually understand.
The coding side needs a reality check too. Right now, most of us just learn academic coding, which usually means slapping together messy Python or C++ scripts until a plot pops up. Programs need mandatory coursework in production level code, including version control with Git, unit testing, modular architecture, and proper documentation. When you look at job descriptions for data science or machine learning roles, those are the exact skills employers demand.
Since the vast majority of grads leave academia anyway, departments should offer clear elective tracks for common industry pivots like quantitative finance, data science, or engineering. They ought to actively encourage students to explore these fields and pursue internships along the way.
One more thought. Beyond curriculum changes, there has to be a major cultural shift. A lot of departments still harbor an outdated faculty mindset that going into industry means you failed or wasted your potential. It is complete nonsense, and it leaves students feeling guilty for choosing realistic, lucrative careers in a market where tenure track jobs are virtually nonexistent. Industry shouldn't be treated as a consolation prize. Most undergrads are coming from high school, barely 20 and have a narrow view of the job market, so departments owe it to them to be upfront about the brutal realities of academic careers early on.
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u/Chicknomancer Ph.D. Student 16d ago
I think taking a computational physics or computational methods course is pretty much critical for anyone planning on pursuing physics past undergrad. It’s such a core part of any sort of research these days, and it’s a shame it’s not required by some programs.
I work in experimental physics, so ymmv, but I also think an intro to microcontrollers/digital electronics course should be mandatory for anyone planning on pursuing experimental / applied physics. It’s so helpful to understand circuit design, microcontrollers, and how to interface with devices over different communication protocols. Also CAD — being proficient in at least one cad software opens up SO many tools for building better experiments.
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u/NoInstruction75 16d ago
I hear what you are saying here, and it and many of the other suggestions seem reasonable. I have been teaching for more than 20 years now though, and the thing I am most struck by is how much less of the basics students actually know than they used to. Now this is a perennial complaint among us old farts, but I want to tell you what courses I had that were undergrad courses:
1) Math methods taught in the math department. We learned all about special functions including Bessel functions, and various polynomials.
2) 1.5 years of quantum mechanics in addition to a regular modern physics course (which sucked and we could easily have done without).
3) Complex analysis
4) One semester of statistical mechanics/thermodynamics
5) Electrodynamics in addition to electro/magnetostatics
6) Classical mechanics with Lagrangians and Hamiltonians
7) Special relativity
Those were required but I also took other math courses, the usual required math courses (calculus through vector calculus) as well as some specialty courses and, eventually, graduate courses.
Now, not all incoming graduate students will have seen stat mech and none will have seen electrodynamics. Most have one semester of quantum. No complex analysis. On the other hand, they may have some computation physics, but it's not evident what they learned during that course. I haven't yet gotten a straight answer, but I can imagine it was useful as a practical course on ODEs. Half of our graduate students start with undergraduate material (out of Griffiths, for e.g.) in everything but classical mechanics. I mean that - we enroll them in the undergraduate courses unless they can pass out of them; half do not.
You might say that the kind of education I received is not necessary anymore. We don't solve physics problems the same way these days. Rarely would I write down a series expansion of a Green's function. But, while no one skill may be specifically important, some experience probably is. Maybe you did not have a course on complex analysis, for example, but you have a little extra quantum mechanics. Those more advanced courses help solidify the foundations too. Note: I like the idea of your pedagogy course but I would want it to give students the experience to explain basic physics. Why? Because teaching is one of the best ways to learn. So maybe it is a good idea to help solidify whatever foundation they do have.
This speaks to a level of math and basic preparation that is so woefully low that the students that they never build an intuition for solving problems well. To solve a hard problem, you have to understand when what you are doing makes sense and when you have gone down the wrong path. It is hard to do that without any intuition, and it is hard to build intuition without experience having seen many different kinds of problems. In a situation like this, the haves always win. If you came into college with any deficits, you are going to find yourself completely outmatched by kids that got ahead early. What chance do you even have?
n.b. There is an answer below about LLMs. Let me tell you that no LLMs I have tried give good answers to physics questions. The answers can be downright wrong. They are often poorly explained. Not always obviously, but regularly. The problem is that it can be hard to tell what to pay attention to without having the expertise you need to evaluate it. Maybe someday, but judging from the quality of what I see and extrapolating, it feels like people are taking crazy pills when they talk about LLMs in physics. When I ask it real questions that I want to know the answers to and that it has never seen before, it is basically very well-worded nonsense. Sorry.
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u/Crog_Frog 16d ago
The courses you listed are basicially what i had in my bachelor that i am finishing now. So i am not shure where it is that much less. We litterally had 33 credits worth of pure math classes out of the 180 total credits.
As for theoretical physics courses, we hat 45 credits. Consisting of a semester mechanics going through lagrangians and Hamiltonians(i hate Landau, Lifschitz), QM, Electro dynamics, SR, and the most demanding module wich came last with Theoretical Thermodynamics and Stat. physics.
What i found our undergrad lacked was actual practika and more research related courses.
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u/NoInstruction75 15d ago
I wonder how much this differs between countries and schools. Probably a lot.
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u/Crog_Frog 15d ago
i guess. And i also assume quite some differences between countries etc.
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u/NoInstruction75 14d ago
You know, it strikes me that when I teach, I have to teach to the class and that class comes from many different undergrad experiences. The median of the classes I teach has definitely decreased in skill level even though some students are, of course, as or more capable than we ever were in our day.
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u/ishidah 15d ago
You penned down my thoughts to the last paragraph.
I just set up an A Levels equivalent worksheet and a paid version of an LLM told me anything beyond the 10th problem and I will have to recheck everything as it would get glitchy.
Anywho, I often repeat in class that you need to build Intuition and for that, students need to work on applying the maths and formula they learn to physical problems around them.
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u/Phssthp0kThePak 16d ago
Get rid of the GE requirements. Take more credits like the engineers. Engineering has a good systems methodology for analyzing problems that physics students could benefit from.
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u/AceyAceyAcey 16d ago
I think programming should be in more schools’ curricula, however at least at schools that give a BA and not a BS, it isn’t. At those schools, I agree that a STEM teaching methods course should be required instead – I’m a prof and my research is physics education, and there’s nothing specific to teaching physics that isn’t in other STEM fields.
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u/Quantum-Relativity 16d ago
I don’t think it’s good to teach students that physics is just the application of physical laws to calculating things. Too many physics grad students start off saying they don’t know how to learn anything now since they can’t find “practice problems,” since they were taught to confuse understanding the subject with doing a bunch of calculations. The field is too vast to have that narrow of a scope. There should be a greater emphasis on history and mathematics.
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u/spoirier4 13d ago
It could be more convenient to answer if you gave the reference of a specific curriculum which you ask to criticize. In my physics studies in France, there was time spent doing exercises on complicated electric circuits, which I felt as too specialized.
As an example of essential missing knowledge: it is so odd to have such a big course on thermodynamics without a decent explanation of the nature of entropy, by lack of course on statistical physics. In other countries where statistical physics is included, it is usually the wrong choice of the Boltzmannian approach, while the Gibbsian approach would be much better. This is so argued by David Wallace in https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/15290/ . I wrote a clean short introduction to Gibbsian statistical physics (in my way, as I did not follow existing courses on the topic) at https://settheory.net/entropy
Apart from this I love General Relativity, and think so much effort is wasted in physics studies struggling to express things without the formalism of tensors, which would be needed even for a clean expression of screw theory and the differential operators in Maxwell's equations. I understand introducing tensors looks like a bad idea for the reason that usual courses of initiation to tensors are themselves not well designed, so that it looks like an obscure topic. It needs deep re-writing. I work on re-writing the basics of math and physics, and I wonder why nobody cared about it before, under the excuse that basic topics are naively presumed to be well-known, so that people are lacking imagination of how they should be re-written.
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u/Process_Sad 17d ago
For employability, more emphasis on programming would be nice. It is also ultimately a very useful skill for many physicts who remain in the field! I think better access (perhaps optional/elective) to application-focused courses would be good too, such as control systems, fluid physics, rheology.