During the two-day class -- held June 27-28 on the NJIT campus -- high school sophomores and juniors will learn about careers in physics and astronomy, do hands-on science projects and learn from prominent NJIT physicists and astronomers. The students will tour the NJIT campus and science labs and spend a night in the university’s air-conditioned residence halls. For a part of that night, students will observe the skies with a 10-inch Meade telescope.

“The class will give students a sense of physics and astronomy through scientific talks, a visit to the Dreyfuss Planetarium and direct telescopic observations,” said Slawomir Piatek, PhD., a special lecturer in the department of physics at NJIT. “Students will have the chance to interact one-on-one with faculty as well as graduate and undergraduate students at NJIT. Most college students who major in science or technological fields must study physics, so the class will be especially helpful for them.”

Students at NJIT who major in physics and astronomy pursue various careers after they graduate, said Piatek. Some have gone into marketing, manufacturing and technical sales; others study physics and astronomy at leading graduate schools, after which they teach college or do research for private companies. Still others use their quantitative and analytical skills to design medical and optical instruments or work on Wall Street quantifying the financial markets. 

Students who sign up for the class will receive kits of optical components, from which they’ll build and test telescopes, spectrometers and other optical systems. Students will keep their kits when the class ends. Students will also visit the Dreyfuss Planetarium at the Newark Museum. NJIT students who major in physics and astronomy will talk to the students about their majors and discuss the careers they are pursuing. The NJIT students will also play basketball, soccer and other sports with the students.  

For more information or to register for the class call Professor Piatek at (973) 596-3567.  Students can also visit http://astronomy.njit.edu/Physics_Summer_Flyer.pdf.

Ranked highly in the nation, the physics department at NJIT has outstanding faculty members with internationally known research expertise and proven teaching experience. The physics curriculum offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. The department is one of the few in the nation to offer undergraduate courses in the theory of special and general relativity. Research areas of excellence are solar physics, optics and photonics, materials science, biophysics, solid state physics and astronomy.