Physics

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”

– Max Planck

Course Highlights:
CERN
High Voltage Labs at Southampton Uni
Optoelectronics at Southampton Uni
Masterclasses
Visiting Speakers

Desirable skills:
Resilience, logic, eye for detail, organisation, positivity

Other subjects that work well with this course are:

  • Maths (Strongly advised)
  • Further Maths
  • Chemistry
  • Product Design

Why study Physics at A level?
This course is for students who have an interest in, and enjoy Physics, want to find out about how things work, enjoy applying their mind to solving problems, enjoy carrying out investigations by the application of imaginative and logical thinking and want to use Physics to support other qualifications or progress onto further studies or employment.

Course overview
This course will develop knowledge and skills to help understand the world around us and how Physics is an intrinsic part of our everyday life. The content of this course will address various aspects and applications of Physics covering classical Physics to more recent discoveries and theories.
The course is being continually improved with an ever-increasing range of visits and talks spread out over the two years. All in all, a well balanced mix of fun and academic progress.
Practical Physics is used as much as it can be, with real life applications being used whenever possible, and teaching resources are available on the Student Resource Bank.

Students studying Physics will have:
• New things to explore – Particle, nuclear and quantum physics.
• Old friends to investigate – waves and thermal physics
• Deeper things to study – Fields and electricity
• Real world applications – mechanics and thermal
• A chance to explore ideas in more detail than at GCSE and find out what E=mc2 really means!

Progression routes and future careers
This course will help prepare students for the employment market as Physics A level is held in very high regard by most industries especially ones where there is a specific need to be logical and rigorous either in testing or reporting – Finance, Law and Management, the Armed Forces, Astronomy/Space Industries, Computer Science, Dentistry, Electronics, Engineering of all disciplines, Materials Science, Medicine, Medical Physics, Pharmacy, Product Design, Physiotherapy.