Physics | Penn Today

a large group of people in front of the Franklin Institute building with a science demonstration (with smoke and the aftermath of an explosion that caused colored balls to fly into the air) in the foreground

Philadelphia: The new city of science

Penn researchers will be involved in a weeklong series of interactive activities and events across the city as part of the Philadelphia Science Festival.

a line of test tubes filled with a rainbow of colored chemicals

Seeing the world through a biophysicist’s lens

Philip Nelson demonstrates how seemingly simple questions like ‘What is light?’ help scientists understand, and improve, how people visualize the world around them.

Answering big questions by studying small particles

Using electronics designed at Penn, particle physicists study neutrinos, incredibly small and nearly massless subatomic particles, to understand the fundamental nature of the universe.

a silhouette of a woman with a cape standing on top of a hill

STEM legacies: Five researchers reflect on the women who inspire them

For Women’s History Month, Penn faculty share their perspectives on enterprising women in STEM who have been sources of inspiration in a field with a large gender imbalance.

six agar plates with different types of bacteria growing on them

Bacterial population growth rate linked to how individual cells control their size

Developed at Penn, a theoretical model from a new area of research at the interface of math, physics, and biology describes how individual parameters can influence population-level dynamics.

a group of women talking while sitting around a table

Women in Physics Group inspires the next generation of physicists and astronomers

Students had the opportunity to interact with a world-renowned astronomer during a day of informal get-togethers, networking events, and physics lectures at the annual conference.

Exploring the unseen: On dark matter and dark energy

Physics professors Mark Trodden and Masao Sako explain how dark matter and dark energy shape their work.

Eugene Mele and Charles Kane standing together in a courtyard

Charles Kane and Eugene Mele receive the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award

The Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria have recognized the Penn physicists for their discovery of topological insulators.

A physical model for forming patterns in pollen

Physicists have developed a model that describes how patterns form on pollen spores, the first physically rigorous framework that details the thermodynamic processes that lead to complex biological architectures.

colorful dots arranged to look like the neurons inside a brain

The physics of multitasking

Penn physicists characterize the limits of multitasking in biological networks, paving the way for future applications in fields from biology to medicine.

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