Senior Project I

Senior Project I is where you stop being a student who solves assigned problems and start being a junior researcher: you pick a topic with a faculty advisor and actually do physics on it for a semester, whether that means a calculation, a simulation, or bench work. The real deliverables are the intermediate reports, the final PRB-format write-up, and a presentation — so as much of the work is learning to communicate results as it is producing them. It's the bridge between your coursework and PHYS 492 in the spring, and for many people it's the first honest taste of what graduate research or an R&D job actually feels like day to day.