In the Dark

Following on – sort of – from yesterday’s post – here is a little promotional video about the ‘Omnibus’ Bachelor of Science undergraduate course (codename MH201). I have blogged about this course before (e.g. here) but this gives me an opportunity to repeat the salient points.

Currently, most students doing Science subjects here in Maynooth enter on the General Science programme a four-year Omnibus BSc course that involves doing four subjects in the first year, but becoming increasingly specialized thereafter. That’s not unlike the Natural Sciences course I did at Cambridge, except that students at Maynooth can do both Mathematical Physics and Experimental Physics in the first year as separate choices. I’d recommend anyone who wants to do Physics in the long run to do both of these, as they do complement each other. Other possibilities include Chemistry, Computer Science, Biology, etc.

In Year 1 students do four subjects (one of which has to be Mathematics). That is narrowed down to three in Year 2 and two in Year 3. In their final year, students can stick with two subjects for a Joint Honours (Double Major) degree, or specialise in one, for Single Honours.

I like this programme very much because it does not force the students to choose a specialism before they have had a taste of the subject, and that it is flexible enough to accommodate Joint Honours qualifications in, e.g., Theoretical Physics and Mathematics. It also allows us to enrol students onto Physics degrees who have not done Physics or Applied Mathematics as part of the Leaving Certificate.

Anyway, this video features Oisín Davey, who took Mathematical Physics, Experimental Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in his first year. As a matter of fact I taught him in Year 1 (Mechanics & Special Relativity) and Year 2 (Vector Calculus and Fourier Series) but, despite that, as he explains, he has decided to persist with Mathematical Physics. He will be in the final year next academic year, after he returns from his summer in CERN, and I’ll be back from sabbatical.

This entry was posted on May 27, 2024 at 9:38 am and is filed under Education, Maynooth with tags education, General Science, Learning, mathematics, Maynooth University, Oisin Davey, Science, teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.