On Thursday the 6th November our Y13 Physics students had the privilege of hearing talks from 5 top physics specialists who were all experts in their field covering a range of real world applications and cutting edge physics and gave students a chance to enjoy learning about Physics beyond the curriculum. There was also a well delivered and highly informative session on exam technique. Follow the links below to find out a little more about the speakers and watch this space as hopefully one of them may come to us in 2015!

• Simon Singh
• Andrew Steele
• Sheila Kanani
• Martin Archer
• Ben Hanson

 

The APS physics department has had the pleasure of hosting one of three Capital Physics Conferences with over 20 physics teachers and 10 technicians from over 10 schools across London attending. The session held by Barbara Dirkin and Peter Campbell from the Institute of Physics focused on A-Level physics teaching and learning and how more students can be encouraged to opt to study physics beyond GCSE.

The feedback from all attendees was extremely positive and there were many comments about the significant improvement in Physics A-Level results at APS over the last two years and now outperforms Biology and Chemistry at both key stage 4 and 5.

The conference was hugely successful and many different ideas were exchanged. Many thanks to Peter and Barbara of the IoP as well as Trevor Plant, the Capital Physics Manager.

More information about the Capital Physics Project can be found on the Institute of Physics website here:

http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/capital_physics/page_63685.html 

It's been a busy start to the new term and the Physics Department has already been on their first trip.  30 A-Level Physics students visited the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire. The 80 hectare site hosts world's largest magnetic fusion experiment, JET (Joint European Torus) and has over 500 scientists including over 350 from Europe conducting a variety of experiments.  The students had a fantastic time and here are a selection of comments and photographs form the event.

APS physics students have come back from what will be an annual visit to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva.  The 3 day trip allowed students to attend lectures and tours of the testing facilities of the world's greatest experiment.  The trip was a great success and the pupils were able to see first hand the cutting edge of physics.  Here are a selection of comments and photographs from the trip.