Physics Department

Physics at St. Lawrence is about learning how to deal with problems when there isn’t a clear set of steps to follow. Independent work isn’t something you wait until the last semester to try. It grows steadily across the major.

In your first two years, you learn the basics that make everything else possible. You learn how to write simple Python code to work with data, take measurements in the lab, and tell when results make sense and when they don’t. Labs are structured at first so you can focus on learning the tools, and your professors are there with you when things get confusing.

By junior year, the work opens up. Projects last weeks instead of hours. You begin choosing your own research questions and making decisions about how to collect data, how to analyze it, and how to fix things when they don’t work. You may even work with our machinist to design and build parts of your experimental setup.

In your senior year, you complete a year-long project of your own. You start with a question, work through setbacks, and finish with something real that you can explain at conferences and be proud of.

After St. Lawrence, our students head into engineering, data science, medicine, biophysics, graduate school, and technical careers. They leave knowing how to learn on their own and how to keep going when problems get hard.