Departmental Honors
Information/documentation pertaining to receiving Departmental Honors in Physics (a.k.a Sr. Honors Thesis):
- Official guidelines
- Departmental Honors Application Form
- Faculty Reference Form
- Thesis topic and Advisory committee acceptance form
- Checklist
- University Honors FAQ
Physics Majors' Best Kept Secrets
Things you should know, but might not know to ask:
- You can do a Senior Honors Thesis without being in the Honors Program
- The Physics Department has two awards (The Lutz Prize and Weaver Prize) which are given when exceptional potential is seen in a student. The award descriptions are:
- Lutz Prize: The Arthur L. Lutz Prize is awarded to a student showing potential for a career in secondary physics teaching.
- Weaver Prize: The Weaver Prize in physics is awarded to the junior physics major who shows the greatest potential for a career in physics.
- You can get paid for working on a summer research project
- See faculty about projects they are working on
- Write a proposal for funding a summer project from the Student Development Board (details: after clicking on the most recent Faculty Manual, search the document for "summer research grants")
- Search for a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site in
Student Research
One of the best ways to learn physics is to do physics! At Wittenberg, students have the opportunity to work closely with faculty on ongoing research projects, or on projects of their own devising. Projects can be computational, theoretical, or experimental. Below are examples of research projects that Physics majors have done for their Senior Project:
- Alex Previte ('13) Beaver Creek Corridor Design and Analysis
- Elias Pavlatos ('13) Finite Element Analysis of Radius and Ulna
- Jeremy Massengale ('13) Probing the Thermal Fluctuations in Bulk YBCO Superconductors
- Katie Bondy ('13) Gait Analysis of Wittenberg's Women's Basketball Team: The Relationship between Shoulder Movement and Injuries
- Manas Mudbari ('13) Beamforming with Neural Network
- Meredith Troy ('13) GRAVITATIONAL MICROLENSING:RAY TRACES AND LIGHT CURVES
- Susannah Engdahl ('13) Solving the Bioheat Equation for Transcutaneous Recharging of a Medical Device Using Electric Fields
- Sven Isaacson ('13) Oscillations of Water Balloons
- Alex Burwell ('11): Depth Sensor
- Andy Hoffman ('11): Buck Creek Flow Analysis
- Vincent Bogenrife ('11): INTERACTIONS BETWEEN INVOLUTE SPUR GEARS
- Jason Barkeloo ('10): Computational Modeling Decay Spectroscopy
- James Dunkin ('10): Digital Simulation of Thunder from Three-Dimensional Lightning
- Lisa Kroupa ('10):
- Erica Snipes ('09): Measurements of Finite Dust Temperature Effects in the Dispersion Relation of the Dust Acoustic Wave