Department of Physics and Astronomy - Minnesota State University Moorhead

Department of Physics and Astronomy
College of Health, Science, & the Environment

Department Seminar Do You Believe in Life After Physics?
by Hollee Klesh (Amazon)
Friday, February 21, 2020 at 3:00 pm in Hagen 325
Picture this: you're a new owner of a BS in Physics. You start physics grad school and...it really isn't for you. You don't have enough experience to get a science job but you definitely still need to make money because those student loans don't pay themselves. What's next? Are you even qualified to do anything? Was any of this worth it? Short answer: totally! Long answer: come hear Hollee talk about the post-graduation path she's had from customer service to program manager to software development student, all at the same giant company. She'll discuss the various ways in which her physics degree has really been helpful and the things she wished she had figured out while in school (which you can definitely do). Maybe she'll even throw in some anecdotes about her time searching the Amazon website daily for every imaginable adult product! Senior Project Proposals
by Abel Eshete and Erick Quintana (MSUM)
Friday, February 28, 2020 at 3:00 pm in Hagen 325
Relativistic Lagrange Formulation of the Radius of a Black Hole in an Isotropic Coordinate
by Abel Eshete

Black Holes are intersting objects in the universe. They are places where the notion of space-time loses its meaning. In 1915, exactly one year after the gravitational field equations were published, Karl Schwarzschild found an exact solution to the field equations. The solution represents a basic geometry of an ideal black hole. My aim for this project is to rewrite the Schwarzschild geometry in an isotropic coordinate and solve the gravitational field equations and use relativistic Lagrange mechanics to determine the radius of a black hole.

Modeling Various Possible Galactic Potentials in Python
by Erick Quintana

I will use the Python package galpy to model galactic dynamics using gravitational potentials from various theories, such as the currently accepted dark matter potential, as well as other possible potentials like MOND. I will compare the modeled galaxies in various ways such as rotation curves and luminosity profiles with data publicly available to test each theory to observations.

Department News

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Mission Statement

Our mission is to provide excellent undergraduate instruction in physics and astronomy. In lower division courses, faculty use lecture demonstrations, cooperative learning methods, hands-on activities, and field trips to develop a broad working knowledge of physics. In upper division courses, in addition to the above methods, students learn through cooperative projects, research with faculty, and hands-on instrumentation and computation projects.

About the Department of Physics and Astronomy

The MSUM Physics and Astronomy program is a student-centered program. We provide students with educational opportunities in the classroom and outside it in order to improve their preparation for a career using physics.

We have facilities including a nanotechnology and robotics lab, a student-built NMR machine, and the Paul P. Feder observatory.

Our faculty have high quality research programs in space physics, robotics, extragalactic, galactic, and solar system astrophysics, and physics education. Our undergraduate students participate in these research programs and gain experience to prepare them for careers in physics and related fields.

Contact Information
Office: Hagen Hall 307
Phone: (218) 477-2141
Email: lindellj@mnstate.edu

Send ground mail to:
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Minnesota State University Moorhead
1104 7th Avenue South, Hagen Hall 307
Moorhead, MN 56563

An interactive campus map of Minnesota State University Moorhead is available to find Hagen Hall .