Overview | Honours | Summary of Courses

Offered By:	ANU Joint Colleges of Science
Academic Contact:	Prof John Close
Areas of Interest:	Physics

Description:

The Physics minor introduces the fundamentals of Physics. It aims to provide a balance of knowledge and skills for those whose major is in an area other than physics. Skills include: problem solving, data gathering, data analysis, and experiment design.

The minor will prepare students for careers in which the physical sciences are used, including: research, teaching, and industry.

Learning Goals:

Students who complete the Physics minor will be able to:

1. Describe and explain some of the fundamental principles of physics.
2. Apply the fundamental principles of physics to solve elementary problems, including those likely to be encountered in future careers. Such problems may involve ambiguity and uncertainty and require the application of multiple principles.
3. Describe and explain specific examples of how physics is applied to benefit people.
4. Describe some critical experiments in the history of physics and explain how they led to revisions of our theoretical descriptions of nature.
5. Use mathematical, computational and experimental skills to solve elementary conceptual and quantitative problems in physics.
6. Demonstrate skills including: equipment familiarity, data gathering, record keeping, data analysis, dealing with uncertainty, experiment design, and comparison with theory.
7. Analyse unfamiliar physical systems and provide order-of-magnitude estimates of quantities. This includes a knowledge of basic physical constants and key equations.
8. Be both creative and rigorous in the design and construction of scientific investigations of physical systems.
9. Effectively communicate physics based analyses to expert and non-expert audiences.
10. Constructively criticise evidence, arguments and conclusions wherever they are encountered.

Requirements

This minor requires the completion of 24 units, which must include:

A total of 12 units from the following compulsory courses:

PHYS1101 Physics 1

PHYS1201 Physics 2

A total of 12 units to be chosen from any 2000 or 3000 level PHYS or ASTR courses

Advice to Students:

What 1st year courses should you enrol in?  PHYS1101 and PHYS1201. PHYS1101 has a corequisite of either MATH1013 or MATH1115. PHYS1201 has a corequisite of either MATH1014 or MATH1116.

Students should seek further course advice from the academic convener of this Physics minor

The information published on the Study at ANU 2013 website applies to the 2013 academic year only. All information provided on this website replaces the information contained in the Study at ANU 2012 website.