This month I was among a group of current Physics postgraduates, who had completed their undergraduate (in Physics) at UWA, that were invited to attend a brief 30-minute session with visiting members of the Australian Institute of Physics. The purpose of the meeting was to provide truthful and honest feedback of the Physics major as part of the AIP’s regular accreditation process. Of course, I won’t disclose the exact details of that meeting, but it did get me thinking.
Over the years, I have spoken to many students, past and present, about their opinions of the Physics major. Most of what I heard was mixed. Indeed, my memories are still fresh from when I myself commenced the long and gruelling journey five years ago, and while some might say it is the duty of students to complain, there was both a lot that I thoroughly enjoyed, and a lot I would like to see improved. So in the spirit of that discussion, I have decided to put my own thoughts to paper.
The Curriculum
Physics is a major, which at UWA basically means an 8-unit core sequence of at least 2 first-year units, 2 second-year units and 4 third-year units (with additional or complementary units as required). Students at UWA have the option of taking a second major; the most popular pairings with Physics (from what I observed) were Engineering and Mathematics. Indeed, I was in the clear minority with my choice of Computer Science. The general topics and progression was as follows.
| Year | Semester One | Semester Two |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mechanics & thermodynamics, waves & optics, electricity & circuits + Differential calculus & linear algebra (req. math unit) | Magnetism, introductory modern physics (quantum, atomic, relativity), introductory astronomy + Integral & multivariable calculus (req. math unit) |
| 2 | Quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, electronics (lab) | Statistical mechanics, particle physics, nuclear physics + Vector calculus, tensors (req. math unit) |
| 3 | Quantum mechanics II or Astrophysics + Mathematical physics | Electrodynamics and relativity + Condensed matter, modern optics and/or cosmology (choose 2 from 3). |
Modules, Modules and More Modules
PHYS1001 is everyone’s first experience with physics, and is a complementary unit for many non-physics science majors such as Engineering. Going by the many comments I heard, this was easily the most controversial unit. The key issue being the module structure, with 5 modules for PHYS1001 and another 5 in its follow-up unit PHYS1002. Each module lasts 2-3 weeks and covers a different topic. I’ve personally known someone who dropped Physics because of the rotation of lecturers, changes in lecture material and what I can only assume was a loss of perceived cohesion. While I didn’t have a major issue problem with this structure, I did feel that a lot of content was glossed over and rushed in order to keep to the tight schedule.
A fair comparison is with the first-year mathematics unit (MATH1001 when I took it) that all Physics majors (with sufficient high school maths) must take concurrently. Where the mathematics unit had a self-contained, textbook-like set of course notes, PHYS1001 only had slides and handouts (in 5 different styles / formats for each of the 5 lecturers). I felt I learned so much more in first year math than I ever did in high school, but I felt Year 12 physics was more engaging than PHYS1001.
So why, then, does PHYS1001 falter? Module structure aside, the ridiculously large class size (upwards of 500 when I took it five years ago; I’m sure that number has only grown higher) and the inherent variation in student ability that comes with that likely has a lot to do with it. PHYS1001 doesn’t just cater to Physics majors either. Perhaps that’s why the mechanics stuff was bereft of any mathematical rigour in favour of intricate pulley systems, and also why AC circuits was an entire module in PHYS1002.
Cry Me a Textbook
I mentioned mathematical rigour for a reason. One of the recurring criticisms of the physics degree at UWA is that it lacks mathematical rigour, especially early on. This is not so much of a problem in first and second year, but the third year units on electrodynamics and mathematical physics are like falling off a cliff (even worse for those who continue on to do Theoretical for postgrad). Even though the UWA physics major requires students to take three additional mathematics units, these are nowhere near enough. I cannot stress that enough.
You will have to do some serious self-study to even begin to comprehend some of the problems in third year electrodynamics. Either that or trust in your eidetic memory and/or ability to uncannily study the exact problems that will just so happen to appear in the exam the night before (or have faith in the collective ineptitude of the cohort that makes the lecturer takes pity). Even the postgraduate unit “Advanced Mathematical Physics” unabashedly states in its outline that “the mathematical training of physics students at UWA is rather basic” and is insufficient to understand advanced texts. It is possible to survive third year units without paying much attention to the math, but this is akin to learning a language by memorising sentences instead of learning the grammar.
I’m really not sure where or how the math shortfall can be addressed in a way that is fair to students who wish to study a second major. After all, there are only so many units that can be scheduled, and physics (by its very nature) demands an extensive repertoire and aptitude for mathematics. A good start may well be to introduce some of the more pressing mathematical concepts in second year, thus reducing the height of the cliff come the transition to third year. Again, it should also be said that there is a considerable onus on the student to be prepared. Although those third year units were a slog, they were by no means impossible. Furthermore, although one might think that those who studied mathematics as a second major had an advantage over everyone else, I did not observe any “double-bell” curve or otherwise noticeable impact. The cohort seemed to move as one.
Hall of the Mountain King
Labs are a necessary part of any physics degree (as much as that sentence might upset our Theoretical Physics friends), but the Physics degree makes a pass of the laboratory component compulsory; if you fail your labs, you fail the course. That might sound like an incentive to attend (at least for units where attendance is an appreciable chunk of the mark), but for units like PHYS2001 whose lab mark includes practical tests, it puts on more pressure than is absolutely needed. In my case, those labs were the first and only time I’ve used a breadboard. Call me Philistine, but for content like that to include tests (where the averages hovered in the mid 50s, and the risk of failure is the highest out of all the units) is over-the-top given how irrelevant electronics is for much of the remaining core units in the Physics major. Accidentally blowing up a capacitor should not mean the difference between passing or doing the rounds again. Except for those wishing to pursue Experimental for postgrad, or for those who happened upon an electronics-heavy lab in third year (of which there were very few), you will most likely never encounter this content again.
Lecture Materials
Another very common criticism I’ve heard is with the quality of the teaching materials. This includes slides, handouts, worked problems and the like. As aforementioned, first year consisted of different materials reflecting the style of each of the lecturers (from webpages, to slides, to Mathematica notebooks and beyond). This is not inherently a bad thing, but demands a strong sense of organisation, especially on the learning management system (LMS).
Second year was particularly troublesome on this front with a near laughable quagmire of material. Some physical handouts in class differed from what was posted on the learning management system (LMS), half of the handouts were handwritten while the others were typo-ridden 1cm margin, 10pt LaTeX. Some handouts that were given out in class never even made it to the LMS (in all likelihood the lecturer forgot to upload the documents, but that’s unfair to students with timetable clashes or other commitments).
Unfortunately, as much as an LMS is designed to help improve a student’s learning experience, it relies on the lecturer knowing how to use it. Want the answers to this week’s problem set to check your work? No problem, let me take another week to use my late 2000s Nokia with a single-megapixel to take a photo the handwritten answers in a dim room, then upload each page as a separate link on the LMS.
Call me pedantic, but this was a very testing period for me in my journey through Physics. I should not have to use GIMP to see the answers to problem sets, not when you can get quality resources elsewhere online. So fed up was I that I ended up primarily studying and cross-referencing from MIT OCW’s 8.04 and 8.05 resources as they were significantly better organised. The contrast with how Physics organises its lecture material with that of Computer Science is astonishing; where the former struggles to maintain a consistent experience between units, Computer Science is methodical, standardised and precise.
In stark contrast to my second year experience, some units, such as the third year unit on electrodynamics and relativity, excelled with fantastic lecture slides coupled with fully LaTeX worked problems and examples that accompanied each workshop. Other units, such as the astrophysics unit, overflowed with indomitable course notes.
While the lecture material may have been troublesome at times, the lecturers were on the whole very good (particularly in third year). With the exception of second year where I genuinely felt bored to death in lectures, most lecturers made a special effort to be engaging and went above and beyond to concisely explain the concepts. With the exception of second year, many lecturers responded to emails quickly and with enthusiasm, and it was fairly easy to build a rapport with many of them. With the exception of second year, it was easy to be interested in the lecture content, and the lecturers actively made you want to come to lectures. Special praise should go to the lecturers of the third year units on astrophysics, mathematical physics, and electrodynamics for their excellent support.
So… what happened in second year?
You may have noticed a trend in the previous paragraph. Rather than try and explicitly spell out my disdain for that year, I’ll try and conjure up a description how it felt.
Imagine, for instance, being finally able to go on a nice trip to, say, Paris. You’ve read up on the place extensively; you’ve even consulted a phrasebook (or Duolingo for all its faults) and can confidently initiate basic conversation in French. You meticulously plan your journey and hope to see many of its cultural and historical sights. The time comes for your trip. You are so excited you can barely sleep on the plane. It rains on the day that you arrive. That’s okay, you can still go do everything you wanted to do (well, most of it). But when you eat out that night, the food is horribly bland and overpriced; the wine is stale. The Musée de l’Orangerie is more crowded than you thought, and you are tired by the incessant blabber from the various guides. The Sacré-Cœur is not as grand as you anticipated, and when you’ve completed your walk alongside the Seine you have forgotten what it was that brought you there in the first place. Something’s not quite right; something’s missing. That special spark that once captured your imagination has gone. You’re frustrated because you’ve come all this way and yet you don’t know why it vanished.
That was second year physics.
Starstruck
Astronomy is the odd one out, in more ways than one. Not only is the third year astrophysics unit an optional unit (mutually exclusive with advanced quantum mechanics), but it was the only unit in the physics sequence that used the flipped classroom model. In this model, one learns the content of the lesson before attending (usually by watching videos and completing the required reading), and then completes workshop-style exercises in class. This sounds good in theory, and thankfully it worked quite well in practice (of course, flipped classroom is heavily dependent on the nature of the course material). The small class size also helped with the flipped classroom model, as it was far easier to organise group discussions and fostered much closer rapport between peers as well as with the lecturer.
Given how lopsided first-year physics was with its myriad modules, a flipped classroom model approach would have been considerably better. The second-semester PHYS1002 had this to a limited extent with some of its workshops that required you to practice problems beforehand, and I found it highly effective to reinforce the material.
Programming, or lack thereof
Programming doesn’t really appear in Physics until postgrad (unlike at Curtin where they take a more proactive approach), but once you get there it is assumed that you already know how to code. To avoid this Catch-22, it’s really up to you to take a programming unit in first year, or teach yourself. That said, things are slowly changing; starting this year, PHYS1002 now includes Python programming labs (although they are nowhere near enough what is needed to appreciate the fundamentals). There once was a time when a MATLAB unit was required as an additional unit; however this was dropped when I took the course. Instead, second and third year included Mathematica (in third year Mathematica comprised several labs).
Some people may get angry at me when I say that Mathematica is not really programming (okay, it is functional programming, but most people using it will not be coding elaborate constructs in the Wolfram Language, and it is inordinately harder than it should be to do anything remotely useful in a do loop). When it comes to data analysis and/or visualisation, there are far better alternatives that do not rely on proprietary software and are more general-purpose (such as R or Python and their massive ecosystems). Almost all the postgrad Physics students I have talked to (with the notable exception of Theoretical Physics) have had to code, whether in Fortran for quantum or Python for astro. That a skill of such importance is barely touched on in undergraduate physics is something that needs to change, especially given the growing presence of data science and machine learning in physics-related disciplines.
When all is said and done
Physics really was a mixed bag for me; there were some great experiences but also some experiences that, at times, sapped all of my enthusiasm for the field. I enjoyed my second major, Computer Science, more than I did Physics. In a way, that could be since Computer Science was all relatively new to me. In hindsight, having been thoroughly fascinated with Physics since Years 8-9 where I would spend the nights reading books by Brian Greene and Michio Kaku, it is clear that I came into the degree with elevated expectations. It is no wonder that I was disappointed – disillusioned at times – when those expectations were not met. Going from a Year 12 teacher who captivatingly taught the subject with passionate reverence, I was conditioned to respect the significance of Physics and its evolution, to respect its history, how theories were cumulative, how different fields combine together to form a cohesive whole.
Instead we get a lecture on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that doesn’t even mention Fourier transforms.
But enough about second year. When all is said and done, Physics (minus second year) is a highly enjoyable experience. You will learn a lot, you will feel inspired, you will struggle and suffer through terse assignments, but at the end of it you will feel satisfied. I would strongly recommend a strong psyche to resist the soul drain, along with a well-oiled routine of independent self-study that proactively tackles mathematics and programming.