sparkscience said:
I love physics and astronomy. I am either going to stick with my major in physics or switch to astrophysics. I am not sure yet. I have a funny story. I ran away in my senior year and got married. I got a G.E.D. in New Mexico after I got married. I am divorced now and going to college finally. In high school I was good in math and sciences. It has been a long time for me now though and I am probably going to have to start at calculus again. I am a 23 year old who is just starting college and I have a question that is bothering me:
Am I to old to go to college and still major in physics, seeing how I didn't go to college right out of school?
One of my students (I'm a physics grad student/TA) in my introductory classical physics class is in his mid-thirties, and he's majoring in physics. Of course he also bombed the last midterm, but trust me when I say that this had nothing to do with his age. 23 is by no means too old to start college. When I was in undergrad, one of my TAs was in her late thirties, so presumably she started undergrad way later than you.
As far as physics and astrophysics go, there isn't too much of a difference, but there are a few things that you should be aware of. Astrophysics focuses on less physics and more astronomy, but all of the core classes are the same. I think the question to ask is what you want to do with your degree. If you plan to end with your bachelor's degree and get a job, I would suggest majoring in physics with an engineering emphasis (or better yet, double major in physics and engineering). Physics by itself isn't the most employable major. But with a strong engineering supplement, it becomes much easier to find employment.
If, however, you're going to graduate school, you have more options. Then I would suggest sticking with just physics, because having a broad physics background will serve you well in grad school. If you know you want to go into astrophysics, then you may want to consider getting a BS in astro. Just keep in mind what one of my professors told me: it's easy for a person with a strong physics background to learn the astronomy he needs to be a successful astrophysicist. It's much harder for a person who has the astronomy background to pick up physics on the side. Astrophysicists need to be very good at physics. And at the end of the day, learning quantum mechanics is harder than learning about bremstrahllung processes or accretion disks.
I, for example, got my undergraduate degrees in physics and math, and I never took a single astronomy course. Shortly before starting my first year of graduate school, I sort of accidentally signed up with an astrophysics research group, and decided that I wanted to get my PhD in astrophysics research. I can't exaggerate how valuable my
physics background has been to me. If I majored in astronomy and didn't take any advanced physics courses, I wouldn't be able to take the first year of quantum, E&M, or other graduate physics courses, and I'd basically be a year behind in my classes. So my takehome message is: if you're planning on going to graduate school to study astronomy, getting an astrophysics BS is fine. Just make sure you take the advanced undergraduate physics courses too.
