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Physics: Applied Physics
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The Department of Physics offers studies in a wide range of fields leading to Baccalaureate and Doctoral degrees. The Department has a diverse faculty pool with the majority of professors having their primary appointment in the Physics Department. Many faculty members have joint appointments in other departments at Yale. These include Applied Physics; Astronomy; Mechanical Engineering; Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; Chemistry; Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry; Mathematics; Philosophy; Computer Sciences & Mathematics; and Geology & Geophysics. The specific interests of the Department's faculty members fall into several areas of research which are detailed on the Department's Research Web-page.
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Physics provides the most fundamental understanding of the natural world and of technological achievements. The physics program at Kalamazoo College is designed to integrate physics into the liberal arts curriculum, as well as to provide the necessary skills to pursue graduate study in physics and applied science, to enter engineering programs either through the 3/2 program or graduate study, to become a high school physics teacher, or to enter into other activities which require technical and mathematical skills. In addition to course work the program provides opportunities for research projects on and off campus, and encourages participation in the Kalamazoo College study abroad program.
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The Department of Physics is located within the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. It offers courses in astronomy, physical science, and physics for non-majors; several undergraduate program options, including honors physics program, biophysics track, and a physics education track for physics majors planning an interdisciplinary career; and graduate programs. The Graduate Program in Physics offers training in the basic and applied skills necessary for interdisciplinary research in academia, national laboratories, and industry. The Department of Physics has 18 full-time and 8 adjunct/emeritus faculty, and research expenditures of $2.2 million in astrophysics, biophysics, condensed matter, materials physics,
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Applied physics is a general term for physics which is intended for a particular use. Applied is distinguished from pure by a subtle combination of factors such as the motivation and attitude of researchers and the nature of the relationship to the technology or science that may be affected by the work.[23] It usually differs from engineering in that an applied physicist may not be designing something in particular, but rather is using physics or conducting physics research with the aim of developing new technologies or solving a problem. The approach is similar to that of applied mathematics. Applied physicists can ... be interested in the use of physics for scientific research. For instance, people working on accelerator physics might seek to build better particle detectors for research in theoretical physics.
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Other American physicists pursued such important fields as astrophysics and relativity, while in applied physics, William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invented the transistor. This device, widely used in electronic products, made computers—and the information age—possible. It is an example of the way in which the products of physics research have helped to mold modern society. A measure of the quality of research in this country is the record that, from the time the Nobel Prize in Physics was initiated in 1901 to the year 2001, more than seventy American physicists won or shared this honor.
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The emphasis on the interaction between particles in modern physics, known as the microscopic approach, must often be supplemented by a macroscopic approach that deals with larger elements or systems of particles. This macroscopic approach is indispensable to the application of physics to much of modern technology. Thermodynamics, for example, a branch of physics developed during the 19th century, deals with the elucidation and measurement of properties of a system as a whole and remains useful in other fields of physics; it ... forms the basis of much of chemical and mechanical engineering. Such properties as the temperature, pressure, and volume of a gas have no meaning for an individual atom or molecule; these thermodynamic concepts can only be applied directly to a very large system of such particles. A bridge exists, however, between the microscopic and macroscopic approach; another branch of physics, known as statistical mechanics, indicates how pressure and temperature can be related to the motion of atoms and molecules on a statistical basis (see Statistics).
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Applied Physics