Open Days - 17 May: Prep (4-13) / 18 May: Senior & Sixth Form (13-18)
LIMITED SPACES AVAILABLE - The perfect opportunity to gain an insight into the school, view the facilities and gather all the information you need.Why Study Physics?
In the physics department, we encourage pupils to be inquisitive and to developing their skills of investigation through the processes of research, experimentation and analysis. Pupils develop a love for learning and discovery that allows them to not only cover the curriculum, but to also extend their interests beyond the specified topics and learn about ideas and areas that they enthuse about; often this results in a pupil-led lecture evening.
Enthusiastic teachers who have a passion for the subject, work in modern, well-equipped and comfortable laboratories, to instil an understanding and way of thinking that enables pupils to appreciate that what they see is not always as it seems.
Is Physics for You?
We actively encourage co-curricular activities such as lectures, visits and entry to competitions. In addition to this, a number of Sixth Form pupils participate in an inspirational visit to CERN in Geneva. Our pupils have also gained places on Headstart courses where they are able to experience life at university while working in labs.
When you play sport and decide how fast you need to run and in which direction you need to go, you are applying some of the basic laws of physics! How do you catch a cricket ball so that it does not hurt your hand? Do you ever stop to ask "I wonder why"? If you have, then physics is for you.
In Third Form we offer an in-house course entitled From the very big to the very small, followed by the AQA GCSE Physics course during the Lent Term.
Fourth and Fifth Form pupils will start on the AQA GCSE Physics course, but may be given the option to follow the AQA Combined Science Trilogy course after their internal exams and in consultation with members of staff.
Physics Competition
Our physics department has a strong history in competition success. Each year, many pupils choose to enter the British Physics Olympiad, a competition designed to test the most able young physicists in the country and ultimately is used to select the British Physics Team.
The competition consists of a very challenging two-hour 45 minute exam, with questions based on the A-level syllabus. However, the demand of the questions is far higher, each one set to challenge pupils' understanding of a different aspect of the universe, requiring them to have a separate perspective in order to have a chance of answering it.