Opening image of an undergraduate female student with other students working in the background.

On screen text: Department of Physics

I’m Alice, I’m a third year studying Physics at the University of Warwick.

On screen text: Alice 3rd year

When I was in Year 11 I did a taster for Physics A-Level and we had this really kooky Physics teacher, and she took us out to the field and we were sling-shotting water balloons across the field and it was kind of like what’s this got to do with Physics, and then she was like well actually if we look at the angles we can calculate the angle which will maximise the distance, and that’s Physics and at the moment it was like actually Physics is really cool.

Question on screen: What first attracted you to the Department at Warwick?

I really really liked the campus, that was the first thing it was a beautiful campus. And the thing that really set it apart from the other Universities for me was that the academics were just so friendly, like they were the ones that were showing us round all of the labs and you know the teaching rooms and stuff and they were just so, they were just so nice and easy to talk to and I didn’t really feel that with any of the other departments I saw.

One of the things that I was most looking forward to about studying here was being a part of a serious community of physicists, feeling like I was surrounded by other people that were as keen to learn as I was, which is something that I didn’t have as much at sixth form, but obviously here you know everyone wants to be here, they want to be studying and they’re really really motivated, so I was really looking forward to being surrounded by people like that.

I think my favourite modules so far have probably been Geo Physics and Physics of Electrical Power Generation, so in Geo Physics we got to learn about the shape of the earth and the composition stuff, which is really interesting because it helps us understand earthquakes and stuff like that’s really applicable to how we deal with natural disasters, things like that. And in Physics of Electrical Power Generation we study things like wind turbines, tidal energy, solar panels and again that’s something that really interests me because environment and sustainability is something that’s really important right now and really current and we are going to be needing the Physics that I have been studying in that module to be moving ahead in the future.

Question on screen: What are the facilities like in your Department?

The lab facilities at Warwick are amongst the best in the country, so the experiments that you do through the course of your degree will allow you to use loads of different pieces of equipment so we’ve done experiments to do with optics and lasers, we’ve used big astronomy telescopes, we’ve used big sort of particle accelerator chambers, x-ray crystals, all sorts of things. One of the coolest labs that we’ve got is the nuclear magnetic resonance lab, which is a piece of research that’s really useful for understanding things like medical imaging, and it helps us to diagnose patients and things like that.

Question on screen: Are there any careers events?

The Physics society works quite closely with the department, every week they run a free pizza session where they have one of the academics will come and talk about the research that they do which is really really nice. It gives you a chance to learn about what goes on in the department. The department also puts on a careers fair each term, which is a really great opportunity to meet with potential employers and learn about what sort of prospects you’ve got once you graduate.

Question on screen: What has been your favourite memory?

A lab that we did in first year where we, we basically generated a stream of charge particles called an electric field and it was basically like this sort of circular hologram, and we were in a dark room so you could sort of see it quite clearly and it was just amazing. It was like looking at the Northern Lights or something and being like I made that happen, that’s Physics. I understand everything about that and that’s Physics, like that’s a real phenomenon that’s happening, it’s really cool. So, that’s probably my favourite memory, it was one of those sort of wow moments.

Question on screen: What is it like to be a Physics student at Warwick?

Being a Physics student at Warwick feels like you’re part of the academic community. I feel like I, I have a voice and I’ll be listened to by my lecturers and stuff and you know it feels like I have something to contribute.

Video ends with image of Warwick logo.