Physics

Nick O’Donnell - Head of Department

Les Stevens
Alec Smith

Physics is housed in a purpose-built laboratory block with three labs (each with its own networked computers) a dark room and a preparation room.The building also contains an ICT suite shared with the Music Department.

We teach all age groups in the Senior School from year seven to year thirteen and have a sound record of academic success at both GCSE and'A' level. Pupils follow the Nuffield Physics courses to GCSE and the OCR 'A' level. A satisfyingly large number of pupils, both boys and girls, have gone onto read Physics at university in the last few years, including a number to Oxford and Cambridge where they have achieved a high class of degree and some have proceeded to further studies at PhD level.

In addition to the academic objective we aim to make Physics an enjoyable subject with a great deal of practical work at all levels and with many unusual experiments - toys, popcorn, jellies, steam puddings all make their appearance, and a mop helps too explain the problems of backstrain.

As well as these rather strange items the department has a very good stock of up-to-date apparatus including a laser, electron diffraction tube, many oscilloscopes including a storage oscilloscope module, radioactivity apparatus, digital timers, sound level meters, a datalogger and sensors, a 90 mm equatorially mounted refracting telescope and much more.

In past years pupils have been taken on trips to Oxford, Bristol and Exeter Universities, the Rutherford High Energy laboratories and the JET fusion reactor, although sadly the latter is now no longer open to school parties.