An undergraduate degree in physics tells prospective employers this person has what it takes to succeed. The physics major learns to start with an ill-posed problem, formulate it quantitatively, solve it, and communicate the results clearly. The skill transfers readily to many fields. Physicists go on to become lawyers, doctors, and engineers. We have come into considerable demand as investment bankers, particularly since it was realized that the Black-Scholes model for futures pricing is mathematically a diffusion equation.

Employment opportunities for people with training in physics are manifold. According to reports SDB95307 and SDB95308 (1992-1993) from the National Science Foundation, people with bachelors degrees in physical science have an unusually low unemployment rate, lower than the rate for people with bachelor's degrees in other sciences.

While not required, the physics major may choose to involve herself in research. An experimental physicist is more than just a scientist and scholar: she is also an electrical engineer, an electrician, a master machinist and mechanic, a plumber (more likely of liquid helium than of water), a carpenter, an expert computer programmer, a chemist, an inventer, a writer, and a tinkerer. An undergraduate in an experimental lab can expect to pick up several of these skills, taking Andy Pommer's machine-shop course, using the services of the helium facility, and learning electronic design and computer programming from the engineers and scientists supporting these services in the department.

A physicist designed and built the first digital computer; Microsoft has run an advertisement for physicists as computer programmers because, they say, physicists program computers better than computer scientists do. Computers find use in laboratories for data acquisition and analysis as well as in numerical calculations, simulation, and visualization. Even where computers are not needed for a particular theoretical or experimental work, we use them in typesetting papers and preparing figures for publications and presentations.

To push beyond the envelope of past work, to make something colder or hotter or thinner or smaller than anyone else has done before, or to measure a property more accurately, experimental physics employs all the tools at its disposal. A single laboratory may use gold electrical contacts, silver thermal pipes, silk threads for insulation, diamond for generating high pressure, and ruby for detecting it. High-energy experimenters in the department head or participate in collaborations at particle accelerators near Geneva, Stanford, Ithaca, and Chicago; others use facilities at Mount Palomar, Rome, and the Mount Stromlo observatory in Australia. Theoretical research can mean one or two people scratching formulae on paper pads or half a dozen running codes on the San Diego Supercomputer Center's Cray T3D.

A good place to start looking for information on joining a research group is the department's research page, where each faculty member describes his or her recent and ongoing work.

If physics seems possibly interesting, you may wish to meet with one or more faculty members. The student-affairs office can make appointments for you, or you may contact the faculty directly. If you don't know whom to contact, send your comments to webstu@physics.ucsd.edu; a physicist will respond.

• Perhaps not the most compelling reason to major in physics, but here goes anyway: Twentieth Century Insurance Company offers a substantial discount on automobile insurance for any scientist with a bachelor's degree in physics.