Best Bits of Being a Physics Student so far!

Well it’s my last day of work tomorrow. It has been a VERY long summer – being a cleaner is a really tough job. It’s also a horrible job – I think people would be amazed at the disgusting state hotel rooms are left in and there’s only one person who’s going to clean it up – the poor old cleaner! However, it has given me enough money to go on a nice holiday next week (I’m off to Sardinia!) and has given me some more motivation to get back to my degree! It’s a tough truth, but working in a job like this does make me want to work harder just so I hopefully wont have to do anything similar again! It also makes you think about what you like most about your degree as you look forward to not having to clean up other people’s bodily fluids, and so I thought this would be a perfect time to let you know what have been my favourite bits of my degree so far.

Good old first year textbook!
If you're heading off to study
Physics you may well find
yourself with a copy!

Every UK physics degree has to fulfill criteria set out by the Institute of Physics, so every degree at every university will cover some common topics. These include advanced mathematics, mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, quantum physics, condensed matter physics, waves and optics and relativity. This sounds like a lot, but having looked through the list I’ve covered all of these in my first two years (I’ve got another two years to go which will be more specialised). While different universities cover material at different speeds, and some go into more detail than others it guarantees that every physics graduate will have a certain level of knowledge about a wide range of core physics topics. But which bits of these have I enjoyed the most?

Quantum Physics

This has definitely been one of my favourite parts of the course. Not only is it mind bending and really exciting, with each new year it becomes cooler. At school I would always say “Oh yes, I’m really interested in quantum”. Little did I know. Literally. At school, you basically learn about some funny particles with weird names and some concepts that sound pretty cool. It’s when you get to university and get to see WHY it works that it becomes much more amazing. The maths is really pretty, the fact it all works when you apply it both to the micro and macro scales and because it is just so often so impossible to understand (well in a sense that you can’t really imagine it) but you can see that it does work makes it a really FANTASTIC topic to study!

How cool does this look! It's such a
lovely equation! :D

Mechanics

This was the very first topic I studied at university, and what a wake up it was for me. As a result of not having studied Further Maths at school, I’d never done any of the mechanics maths modules. I’d only studied topics like vectors and calculus as fairly abstract topics in maths, so discovering they were so important in physics was actually quite a big jump for me. I’m not ashamed to say that I found this topic really challenging either. Most other people had more experience than me so I had to work really hard. But it paid off and actually was really rewarding for me as I felt like I was getting somewhere straight away. My tutor was also fantastic, and I’ll always be grateful to her for convincing me that I wasn’t completely stupid or out of my depth!

The random, generic 'bodies' that
you use in mechanics quickly became
known as potatoes...

Labs

I really love practical work – I always have. I love actually doing stuff myself and over the years I’ve had the opportunity to do some pretty cool stuff. First year labs weren’t always the most interesting tasks, however as we gained the skills required to become more independent the tasks we were given became much better. At the end of my first year I got to do a week long project using X rays to determine the composition of British Coins – we even got to use super strong acids to remove the outer coatings to determine the compositions of the cores (1p,2p and 5p all have steel cores now as otherwise the metal they are made of would be worth more than the coin. As such, not all coins are magnetic) and got to prove which pound coin out of a selection was fake. It's also meant I am full of a wealth of fairly dull information about British coins! My second year long project was also really good – over 6 weeks we got to write programmes in python and use telescopes with digital cameras attached to determine the temperature of sunspots. Next year I’ve got another long project to come, I don’t know the exact topic yet but it will probably fall within the Nuclear Physics category. Exciting times!  

Believe it or not this is the sun! (And
I took the photo!)

I think these three topics have been the most notable parts for me so far, but I am very excited to continue with my degree and find out more stuff. The great thing about a physics degree though is that it is usually pretty interesting, and there are some real WOW moments. When we managed to find the speed of light using Maxwell’s equations (which link electricity and magnetism), when we first learnt about relativity, when we saw how cool maths could really be, when we spent some amazing hours watching beautiful ‘fly throughs’ of galaxies… they’re moments that make the degree really worth it. And well it’s much better than cleaning!

First year coin project - I spent rather
a long time cleaning coins for this
project!

So what is it like being a Physics student?

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't written for a while but it's all been extraordinarily busy recently! As this blog aims to demonstrate what it is like to study Physics at university, this seemed like a fairly obvious topic to begin with. However, seeing as this weekend marks International Women's Day I felt I ought to say a little on what it's like to study Physics as a female. In a nutshell, it's getting better. More and more girls are feeling able to go away and study Physics at whatever level they want to. More high profile science is being done by women. People are gradually accepting that females can study Physics and can be as good at it. I mean, you still come across some idiots who think that if you are studying Physics you are either a) deluded about being good at a 'male' subject or b) just looking for a husband. Thank goodness times are moving ahead and we are beginning to reach a stage where a woman can feel confident about entering a male dominated subject. International Women's Day is such a brilliant way to celebrate the many, diverse achievements of women from across the world, but also to highlight areas in which progress still needs to be made in terms of gender equality. However, that's enough for now. I will be doing a proper blog post about being a woman in Physics in the next few weeks so watch this space!

Anyway... what is it like doing a Physics degree? Firstly: BUSY! During your degree you really do learn what being busy really means. You will probably have one of the highest number of contact hours of any subject (around 20 hours a week). That doesn't sound too bad you think? I mean school has about 25 hours a week? The difference is in the amount of work you have to do outside of the the teaching hours, and how much more intense the teaching really is. There will be days when you really start to resent your friends on other degree programmes, who might just about manage to get in for 5 hours teaching time per week. Reading they say, we have to do lots of reading. And they're right, they do work hard too. But you know the unfair bit? The physicist also has to read -  if they have time that is! As well as the aforementioned contact hours (lectures, lab sessions, tutorials and workshops), each week there are multiple problems to complete and hand in, each of which will probably take hours to do. Add in a couple of lab reports a term, some computing projects and some poster presentations (which will inevitably all be due in at the same time) and you already have a very busy timetable. Then add the reading that we're meant to do (otherwise you'll have no idea what is going on in the course) and there are suddenly no spare hours in the day. 

Credit goes to Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side
cartoon series.

However this in turn has its own benefits. One way of looking at it? You're getting much better value for your tuition fees. And university really is all about hard work and learning at the end of the day. Physics is HARD, there are no two ways about it. But there are rewards in the end. At the same time you also do learn to make the most of the time you have. You find you can actually fit an awful lot into the day and still have time to join societies, go out, make friends and enjoy your time. Even if it means having occasional frantic panics about work. It's still worth it. For example, as well as my degree I enjoy music, including singing in my college choir. I enjoy swimming, yoga and archery. I participate in folk dance, including a recent weekend trip to Edinburgh for IVFDF - the Inter Varsity Folk Dance Festival which was great. This is as well as being involved with many other societies and activities; and spending time with friends. So despite all the busyness there's a lot else to get involved with and a lot of fun to have. I mean, university is about trying new things too. It's just a case of learning how to use your time. 

Secondly: Studying Physics at university level is nothing like studying it at school. Gone are the days of A level Physics where it was all about passing exams. Passing those exams are also a distant memory - no longer are questions short, no longer does the paper lead you towards the answer they want and memories of formula booklets are now fading fast. Exams are now 3 hours long but have far fewer questions. It is no longer a memory test; instead it is a test of your understanding of the actual Physics. Instead of being given some variables that you just plug into a formula you may or may not need to remember you are expected to derive different formula. You need to use MATHS to just get towards a solution to the problem in terms of many variables before you even think about maybe plugging real numbers in. And of course your answer might not have much to do with real life at the end of it anyway. I guess that is one of the biggest differences - Physics at university is all about the maths. If you are considering a Physics degree make sure you a) actually enjoy maths just for the pure maths-y-ness of it and b) are pretty good at it. You will suddenly discover all the varied and wonderful uses for all those things you learnt at A level about which we all said "But yeah, when am I going to have to use this in real life?". I'll tell you where - in a lecture where you write several long pages of notes but never write a single word, except maybe the title. Sometimes not even then. Expect to be pretty much perpetually confused, desperately hoping everyone else is as confused as you are. Sometimes it's worse when you actually think you understand it, you can't help feeling you must have missed the point. Not even joking, questions sometimes look like this when you're feeling lost: "A roof is sloped at 42.7 degrees. A ball is dropped from a height of 1.63m. Remembering the assumption that we are working in just 3 dimensions; when an orange lorry drives past at 99.9% of the speed of light, what is the probability that a pineapple will be produced when the system is observed for the second time? Can we tell what colour it will be?"

However it's not all that bad. Lots of the degree is confusing and will make you tear your hair out but equally it will fascinate you too. You get to break out of the limitations of the physics you learn at school and learn about some really cool stuff. And feel pretty darn smart and smug when you get to quote Physics at other people. To put it briefly - it is all worth it. Yes you spend a lot of time wondering what is going on, and wondering whether you're actually going a little bit mad or whether maybe someone is playing a massive joke on you and this stuff really is just made up. But then there are moments like working out a particularly nasty solution to a complicated integral and finding that suddenly the solution you are meant to get out "just falls out so beautifully and neatly and IT JUST IS SO BEAUTIFUL". Or getting more than a little excited about how particularly stunning your graph turned out to be. (Yes. I get excited about graphs.) Or the moment when your code works so you run through your house proclaiming "IT WORKS. AND IT IS THE MOST MAGNIFICENT THING I HAVE EVER CREATED". These are all the moments that make it worthwhile - despite the fact that you may look a little bit like a total weirdo. Oh well - weird is good. At least it's fun!

Credit to the creator at twisteddoodles.com

So yes, as with any degree Physics has it's ups and downs. There are plenty of boring bits (at least to you - you have to try and remember that someone somewhere thinks this is the most fascinating subject of all) but they are made worth it by the bits where everything suddenly makes sense and you finally feel like you're on top of everything. It's a bit like life really. So is it worth it? Why yes, of course!

What about you? Are you interested in pursuing Physics as a degree? Are you like me currently in the middle of it all? Or have you finished? Has your opinion changed at all? Feel free to ask any questions or add your own thoughts below!