Natural Sciences
Physics and Astronomy are the oldest of the Natural Sciences, delving deep into building a comprehensive understanding of reality and the universe.
'I'd rather have the question that can't be answered instead of the answer that can't be questioned.' -Richard P. Feynman
Online Courses
This course is offered by Caltech and instructed by Prof. Djorgovski on the popular open-access e-learning platform Coursera. The materials includes recorded lectures from a class with the same name taught to undergraduates at Caltech in 2016 along with assignments, a mid-term, and a final exam.
Professor Djorgovski presents a full introduction to Astrophysics, with lectures on topics ranging from black holes, stellar astrophysics, to Cosmology. The course assumes no prior knowledge apart from elementary calculus and classical Physics: content that most high-school students enrolled in Mechanics and Calculus classes are exposed to.
This is a collaborative effort by the Australian National University (ANU) and e-learning platform EdX. Prof. Paul Francis and Dr. Brian Schmidt, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011, instruct a total of four courses on exoplanets, unsolved mysteries of the universe, 'violent' Astrophysical bodies, and Cosmology. The courses comprise of short and engaging videos, extensive notes, and challenging problem sets and a final exam exposing students to what an Astrophysics undergraduate at ANU would study in their first-year.
A major highlight of the courses is the final exam: designed by the Professors to simulate research in Astrophysics. Prerequisites for the courses is an exposure to calculus.
Pioneer in the field of Cosmology, Prof. Alan Guth at MIT, provides a thorough exposure to the inner working of the Early Universe. The course includes real recorded lectures taught by Prof. Guth at the world-class institute in Spring, 2013. Course materials also include problem sets, assignments, and exams assigned to the MIT undergraduates enrolled in the course. Note that the course requires a thorough exposure to calculus, especially differential equations.
A highlight of the course is Prof. Guth's lecture on Cosmic Inflation, a revolutionary theoretical contribution to Cosmology in the past century.
Prof. Allan Adams delivers a mathematically rigorous introduction to the booming field of Quantum Physics over 20 lectures from MIT's 2013 class of the same name in this course. As most of MIT's OpenCourseWare classes, the course is complete with lecture notes, problem sets, exams, and lecture videos.
Prof. Adams' highly interactive, amusing, yet intense classes make this an excellent introduction to the discipline notorious for being difficult and challenging due to its requirement of a high degree of mathematical fluency and deep conceptual understanding of classical Physics, only for the major tenets to be rebuilt by the Quantum world.
YouTube Channels
Short, digestible, yet mathematically thorough, Dr. Elliot Schneider (PhD, Harvard University; BS, Caltech) introduces college-level Physics to curious high school students and refurbishes prior knowledge for Physics undergraduates to provide a solid launching pad for anyone interested in Physics.
Dr. Rebecca Smethurst is an Astrophysicist at Oxford University and provides accessible yet concentrated open questions and recent research developments in the field of Astrophysics through her videos. Her work with Supermassive Black Holes and Active Galactic Nuclei has made her a pioneer in recent developments in Astrophysics, with far-reaching implications of her work in Cosmology.
Physics Girl is a YouTube channel created by Dianna Cowern from MIT that adventures into the physical sciences with experiments, demonstrations, and cool new discoveries. Physics Girl has videos for every atom and eve.
Tibees provides on-the-go introductory videos in Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, and the History of Science for the average individual. Tibees frequently collaborates with other content creators in Physics and provides dissections of examinations administered at world-class institutions like MIT, Harvard, and the University of Tokyo.
Summer Programs
Innovations in Science & Technology (IST) is designed for students who are interested in learning about diverse topics in the STEM fields and applying scientific principles to real-world applications. Students explore a wide variety of scientific fields such as physics, molecular biology, chemistry, biochemistry, astronomy, engineering, neuroscience, immunology, psychology, and earth science. Students also are exposed to interdisciplinary applications across the many scientific fields ranging from the nanoscopic to the astronomical in scale.
While the Summer Science Program (SSP) is not on campus, MIT co-sponsors this residential program, and many MIT students are among the program’s alumni. The curriculum is organized around a central research project in either Astrophysics or Biochemistry. In the Astrophysics program, each team of three students determines the orbit of a near-earth asteroid (minor planet) from direct astronomical observations. In the Biochemistry program, each team designs a small molecule to inhibit an enzyme from a fungal crop pathogen. The programs are six weeks long and offered at locations in Colorado, New Mexico, and Indiana.