TEACHING

PHYS 342L Modern Physics Lab
Designed for physics majors. Exposes students to modern experimental techniques, and teaches them how to present experimental data and its mathematical analysis in the form of a scientific paper. This course was drastically modified by Professors Reifenberger and Savikhin to introduce computer controlled data acquisition. This is reflected in the new comprehensive course manual written by Professors Reifenberger and Savikhin and printed by Purdue (~170 pages).

PHYS 271 Electricity and magnetism (honors)
For physics majors. Unlike many traditional courses it uses concept-based approach and teaches students to solve problems beginning from general principles, which promotes physical thinking.

PHYS 271L Electricity and magnetism lab (honors).
Laboratory component of PHYS 271

PHYS 221 Electricity, light, and modern physics
Taught to non-physics majors (mostly biology, pharmacy, premed). Being a biophysicist, Prof. Savikhin has introduced various examples from his own research into the course to demonstrate the importance of physics for these life science majors

PHYS 322 Optics
This course is designed to expose physics students to optical phenomena, nature of light as contemplated in geometric optics, compelling evidence that a wave theory must be introduced, mathematical/physical description of waves, and apply it to explain optical phenomena.

SCI 190E Integrative Science
This ‘no-book’ course was created by three Purdue professors: S. Savikhin, K. A. Mason, and D. Thompson, representing physics, biology and chemistry. The main goal of the course is to demonstrate that various disciplines have to be combined together in order to understand complex phenomena. Biological systems are featured and principles of physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences are introduced as needed to explain structures and functions of these systems. This approach exposes students to real-life science where the goal is to understand a phenomenon or system as a whole, not just some aspects related to single disciplines. This is a new initiative within Multidisciplinary Education program supported by NSF.

PHYS 172H Honors Mechanics
taught to physics majors and selected honors engineering students. This course is part of a new curriculum developed for Physics and Engineering, a very progressive step for the Physics Department that was taught for the first time on a large scale during Fall 2006. This course uses the same concept based approach as PHYS 271

PHYS 590 Reading course on biophysics for graduate students joining the group

Lectures on Biophysics and laser lab tours are often given by S. Sacikhin to high school students, undergrduate and graduate students, school teachers etc. (outreach program).