Mock Examination

Regular readers (both of them) will know I’m Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Cardiff University. With the undergraduate mid-year exam period coming up shortly, I was thinking of posting something to help the students with their revision of my specialist topic. Based on an appropriate syllabus for this subject inferred from rigorous study of the content of this blog, a friend of mine (who should remain nameless, but is called Anton) suggested the following examination questions.

Feel free to suggest others through the comments box!

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY FINAL YEAR EXAMINATION IN PHYSICS

Option: Theoretical Astrophysics.

Time allowed: 2 hours.

Answer all questions, in full. No credit will be given for partial answers, numerical or grammatical errors, spelling mistakes or any other variety of underachievement.

1. “England’s victorious Ashes series in 2005 was more meritorious than retaining the Ashes in 2010/11.” Discuss.

2. Was Charlie Parker a greater saxophonist than Miles Davis was a trumpeter?

3. Compose a 15 × 15 cryptic crossword using only astrophysical terms.

4. You hear that Bute Park is to be turned into an airport. Write a model letter of complaint to Cardiff City Council.

5. Discuss the influence of Mahler’s awareness of his own mortality on his later Lieder.

6. You have 10 minutes on Google to find a US TV soap star lookalike for Prof. Coles. (Marks will be awarded automatically by a Bayesian image comparison routine.)

7. Compose a Pindarian ode protesting about governmental priorities in science funding.

This entry was posted on January 8, 2011 at 10:43 am and is filed under Bute Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “Mock Examination”

Rhodri Evans Says:
January 11, 2011 at 10:00 am

I would like to add “Barry John would have been a better basketball player than Shane Warne. Discuss using Feynman diagrams only.”

Reply
stringph Says:
January 12, 2011 at 1:40 pm

8. Outline a long-term strategy for the care and management of feline diabetes, including psychological and behavioural aspects. For a bonus mark: as an astrophysicist, do you prefer iron or graphite whiskers?

Reply
Rhodri Evans Says:
January 12, 2011 at 2:58 pm

Discuss R S Thomas’ feelings about the Lambda-CDM model, and how it influenced his poem “A Welsh Landscape”.

Reply
telescoper Says:
January 13, 2011 at 11:23 pm

Here’s one of my own based on a sentence I just read in the TLS:

A performative model of subject formation cannot be thought apart from its implication in regulatory practices operating within discursive regimes that circumscribe the “materiality” of the subject through the citationality of norms.

Discuss.

Reply
- Rhodri Evans Says:
  January 14, 2011 at 5:54 am
  
  That’s why I don’t read the TLS..
  
  Reply
- Anton Garrett Says:
  January 14, 2011 at 10:32 am
  
  “In the sciences jargon is used as a shorthand. In the Arts it is used as a longhand.” Discuss.
  
  Reply
- telescoper Says:
  January 14, 2011 at 11:29 am
  
  To be fair, this example was used by an article in the TLS to illustrate how meaningless academic writing can be. It’s from a “learned” book about the history of the novel.
  
  If that sentence has any meaning at all, I’m afraid it escapes me.
  
  Reply
- Rhodri Evans Says:
  January 14, 2011 at 11:36 am
  
  Well, there is a different between “meaningless” and “impenetrable”. The sentence may be full of meaning, but as it seems impossible to understand, who knows?
  
  Reply
Steve Jones Says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:03 pm

The postmodernism essay generator is always great value

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

just keep clicking refresh to produce a brand new meaningless postmodernism essay complete with references.

On the same site there are also generators for
– adolescent poetry
– band names

both of which are also great!

Reply
telescoper Says:
January 30, 2011 at 9:52 pm

Here’s an even better one:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony is bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

Reply
dmolark Says:
March 21, 2021 at 4:49 pm

naw, man. bird was ultimate.

Reply