David Carico
Physics/Astronomy Instructor
Full Time
I started my education fully expecting to be an engineer. I finished out three semesters at Pierce College, a community college in my home town of Los Angeles, with this intention (although we called them junior colleges back then!), as well as half of my junior year at UC Berkeley, where I had been accepted as a transfer student into the College of Engineering, as a mechanical engineering major. However, after taking a number of courses in upper division physics and engineering, I realized that what I most loved was physics. Since the physics major was under the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley, and I was not allowed to switch my major to a different college, I became an Engineering-Physics major (that was, and still is, an 'official' major at Berkeley), and this enabled me to finish out my senior year taking almost entirely physics classes.
I liked physics so much that I decided to go for the long haul and see if I could get a PhD. I was accepted at Caltech (to my utter amazement) for graduate study in physics; and since graduate school requires one to specialize, I chose astrophysics as the most interesting to me of all physics sub-fields. I spent 6 1/2 years at Caltech learning all that I could of both physics and astronomy, and absolutely loved it!
Having earned my doctorate, I entered the job world trained to be a research scientist, but I learned early on that what I most love is teaching. I still do a bit of research here and there, but most of my time I spend sharing what I have learned and am still learning about this amazing universe.
And that somewhat long-winded story explains why you can now find me teaching physics, astronomy, and engineering here at Shasta College!
What David's Reading
Dr. Carico's Favorite Physics and Astronomy Articles
- Symmetry Magazine: Dark matter
- Symmetry Magazine: Dark energy
- Introduction to gravity waves
- Two black holes merging
- Gravity waves from two black holes
- A gravity wave passing through Earth
- How LIGO works
- NASA Imagine the Universe: Astronomer's Toolbox
- NASA Imagine the Universe: Cosmic Objects
- NASA Imagine the Universe: Big Questions
- NASA Imagine the Universe: Ask an astrophysicist
- The scale of the Universe
- The Hubble Space Telescope: Cosmic Tours