I am an assistant professor in the physics and cooperative engineering
department at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. We currently do not
offer a physics major, but do teach classes to prepare students to
participate in our 3-2 engineering program. We are interested in
developing a major to be offered by our department, but want (and need) to
do things a bit differently. We teach intro I & II (calculus based for
engineers and scientist), Statics, Dynamics, Strength of Materials,
Electrical Circuits, Thermodynamics, and Modern Physics in our department.
The Chemistry department teaches Physical Chemistry I,II,& III (each one of
these classes has a lab). These classes can and are often cross-listed
with physics courses as thermodynamics, Intro to Q.M., and Atomic Physics,
respectively. We are interested in combinig our physics classes with the
physical chemistry classes, and classes from the math department (Calculus
I,II, & III; differntial equations, and linear algerbra) and from the
computer science department (C++ programming I & II) into an applied
physics major.
I have a few questions that I hope you can help me with:
1. Do you have any information that would help us to organize these classes
into a major?
2. Are there any schools that you know that have created a similar major?
3. Is there a standard set of classes that a student must take for a
physics and/or an applied phyics major?