We've moved! Langara's Physics & Astronomy Department is now in the new Science & Technology Building (T Building) on the west side of campus.
The Physics and Astronomy Department consists of eleven classroom and lab instructors. Our goal is to nurture the creativity, critical thinking, physical intuition and computational competence of our students in a supportive and challenging environment. We teach physics and astronomy through hands-on experiences, conversations, symbolic calculations and lectures. Several department members are amateur musicians, and demonstrate concepts from the physics of sound in class. In our basic physics course, students are asked to design, build and play simple musical instruments.
Members of the department come from research backgrounds in biophysics, high-energy particle physics, astrophysics and theoretical physics, and have held positions at the TRIUMF accelerator, the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Xerox Research, and several high-tech companies.
Some department members are involved in educational research focused on improving student learning of physics and astronomy. Others are active in the BC Association of Physics Teachers. Department members have brought physics to elementary school classrooms and performed stage shows at Science World. Langara’s Physics and Astronomy Department is one of the few college physics departments in BC to have both first and second-year physics programs.
The Physics Department offers the following: