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Thinking of Applying for a PhD in Physics or Astronomy?

Posted in Education with tags , , , , , , on November 21, 2011 by telescoper

This afternoon I gave a short talk to our final-year students about postgraduate research in which I passed on some, hopefully useful,  information about how to go about applying for PhDs  in Physics  and Astronomy. I am, for my sins, the Director of Postgraduate Studies within the School of Physics & Astronomy here at Cardiff University.

Although quite a lot of what I talked about was about our own arrangements in Cardiff, I thought I’d jot down here a few general remarks that might be useful to people elsewhere who are thinking of taking the plunge when they graduate. I’m aiming this primarily at UK students applying for places in the UK; special considerations apply for students wanting to do graduate research abroad.

What is a PhD? The answer to that is relatively easy; it’s a postgraduate research degree. In order to obtain a PhD you have to present a thesis like that shown on the left (which happens to be mine, vintage 1988), typically in the range 100-250  pages long. A thesis has to satisfy two conditions for the award of the degree: it should contain original research, which is publishable in an academic journal; and it should present a coherent discussion of that original work within the context of ongoing work in the area of study. In Physics & Astronomy, the PhD is pretty much a prerequisite for any career in academic research, and it usually takes between 3 and 4 years to complete. After submission of the thesis you will have to undergo a viva voce examination conducted by two examiners, one internal and one external. This is quite a tough test, which  can last anywhere between about 2 and about 6 hours, during which you can be asked  detailed questions about your research and wide-ranging questions about the general area.

The Money Side. In the UK most PhDs are supported financially by the research councils, either EPSRC (most physics) or STFC (nuclear & particle physics, astronomy). These generally award quotas of studentships to departments who distribute them to students they admit. A studentship will cover your fees and pay a stipend, currently £13590 pa. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but you should at least remember that it is a stipend rather than a wage; it is therefore not taxed and there is no national insurance payable.

How do I choose a PhD? During the course of a postgraduate degree you are expected to become an expert in the area in which you specialize. In particular you should reach the point where you know more about that specific topic than your supervisor does. You will therefore have to work quite a lot on your own, which means you need determination, stamina and enthusiasm. In my view the most important criterion in your choice of PhD is not the institution where you might study but the project. You need to be genuinely excited by the topic in order to drive yourself to keep through the frustrations (of which there will be many). So, find an area that interests you and find the departments that do active research in that area by looking on the web. Check out the recent publications by staff in each department, to ensure that they are active and to have something to talk about at interview!

Qualifications. Most universities have a formal requirement that candidates for admission to the PhD should have a “good honours degree”, which basically means at least an Upper Second Class Honours degree. Some areas are more competitive than others, however, and in many disciplines you will find you are competing with a great many applicants with First Class degrees.

How to apply successfully. The application procedure at most universities is quite simple and can be done online. You will need to say something about the area in which you wish to do research (e.g. experiment/theory, and particular field, e.g. cosmology or star formation). You’ll also need a CV and a couple of references. Given the competition, it’s essential that you prepare. Give your curriculum vitae some attention, and get other people (e.g. your personal tutor) to help you improve it. It’s worth emphasizing particular skills (e.g. computing). If you get the chance, make use of your summer vacations by taking on an internship or other opportunity to get a taste of research; things like that will undoubtedly give your CV an edge.

The Interview. Good applicants will be invited for an interview, which is primarily to assess whether you have the necessary skills and determination, but also to match applicants to projects and supervisors. Prepare for your interview! You will almost certainly be asked to talk about your final-year project, so it will come across very badly if you’re not ready when they ask you. Most importantly, mug up about your chosen field. You will look really silly if you haven’t the vaguest idea of what’s going on in the area you claimed to be interested in when you wrote your  application!

Don’t be shy! There’s nothing at all wrong with being pro-active about this process. Contact academic staff at other universities by email and ask them about research, PhD opportunities. That will make a good impression. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for advice. Although we’re all keen to recruit good PhD students for our own departments, we academics are  conscious that it is also our job to give impartial advice. Ask your tutor’s opinion.

How many places should I apply for? Some research areas are more fashionable than others so the level of competition varies with field. As a general rule I would advise applying for about half-a-dozen places, chosen because they offer research in the right area. Apply to fewer than that and you might lose out to the competition. Apply to many more and you might not have time to attend the interviews.

What’s the timetable?  Most applications come in early in the new year for entry to the PhD in the following October. The Christmas break is therefore a pretty good time to get your applications sorted out. Interviews are normally held in February or March, and decisions made by late March. STFC runs a deadline system whereby departments can not force students to accept or decline offers before the end of March, so there should be ample time to visit all your prospective departments before having to make any decisions.

That’s all I can think of for now. I hope at least some of these comments are useful to undergraduates anywhere in the UK thinking of applying for a PhD. If there are any further questions, please feel free to ask through the comments box. Likewise if I’ve missed anything important, please feel free to suggest additions in the same manner…

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Order-of-magnitude Physics

Posted in Cute Problems, Education with tags , , , on November 14, 2011 by telescoper

A very busy day today so I thought I’d wind down by giving you a chance to test your brains with some order-of-magnitude physics problems. I like using these in classes because they get people thinking about the physics behind problems without getting too bogged down in or turned off by complicated mathematics. I’ve also kept some of these in archaic units just to annoy people who can only do things in the SI system. I think it’s good to practice swapping between systems, especially for us astro-types who use all kinds of bizarre units, so if you don’t know the units, look them up! And if there’s any information missing that you need to solve the problem, make an order-of-magnitude estimate!

Give  order of magnitude answers to the following questions:

  1. What is the mass of a body whose weight is equivalent to the total force exerted by a 40 mph gale on the side of a house 40 ft long and 20 ft high? Express your answer in tons.
  2. What is the power required to keep in the air a helicopter of mass 500 kg whose blades are 3m long? Express your answer in kilowatts.
  3. The base of the Great Pyramid  is 750 ft square and its  height is 500ft. How much work was done building it?  Express your answer in Joules.
  4. How high would the jet of a fountain reach if it were aimed vertically up and supplied by a water main in which the pressure is 3 atmospheres? Express your answer in feet.

There’s no prize involved, but feel free to post answers through the comments box. It would be helpful if you explained a  bit about how you arrived at your answer!

 

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To Edinburgh and Back

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , on November 10, 2011 by telescoper

I’m back home now after a trip to and from the fine city of Edinburgh which, in case you weren’t aware, is known to the locals as Auld Reekie. I wonder if there’s a local internet guide called Reekipedia?

The excuse for this trip was an invitation to take part in an exercise called a Teaching Programme Review in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. The TPR is an exercise that looks at the courses on offer in the department, how they are taught, as well as the technical and administrative arrangements to back it all up. The Panel involved people from other departments inside the University and a couple of external advisers (both physicists), of which I was one. The Panel will be writing a detailed report on our findings which I hope will turn out to be useful, but it definitely wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on the details here.

What I will say here is that, although it was a very intense and busy few days, including face-to-face meetings with all kinds of academic and support staff, as well as current students, it was extremely interesting. As well as hopefully providing some input and suggestions to the TPR, it was also a chance for me to see the inner workings of another department and pick up a few ideas for the way we teach Physics courses in Cardiff.

One of the striking things about this visit was how similar are many of the problems facing Edinburgh to those we encounter in Cardiff. Another is how easy it is to recognize kindred spirits. It may not always be obvious to the students, but physicists are passionate about their subject, not only in terms of their research but also in terms of nurturing the talents of the students in their care. In the Brave New World of Higher Education we’re all supposed to see universities as businesses, competing ruthlessly in an unforgiving marketplace. In fact, most of us at the real business end of the university system (i.e. teaching and research as opposed to PR and marketing) see our competitors more as colleagues than as rivals. Long may that continue, in my opinion.

During the visit I was taken on a tour of the excellent facilities available at Edinburgh, including some really snazzy and impressive “teaching studios” the like of which I’d never seen before. I’d really love to have a go at teaching in one of those some day, as they offer a different style of education which I’m sure complements the more traditional lecture format. The students seem to like them a lot, which is the most important thing.

However, I have to say that the thing that I was most jealous about was the fact that most of their teaching rooms still have blackboards. Ours have all been replaced with horrible whiteboards that require expensive markers and are far less visible to a big audience. “Chalk and talk” is a tried and tested method and when it’s done well I still think it’s a very effective one. I’m all for innovation in teaching, but some traditional methods are actually pretty good!

Anyway, I’d like to thank everyone from Auld Reekie University for hosting this visit. It was hard work, but thoroughly enjoyable. If anyone from Edinburgh reads this I hope they will pass on my thanks to all the staff and students there for making it such a rewarding occasion! I’m just sorry I didn’t have the chance to see a bit more of the city, but the schedule was just too hectic.

What I did enjoy was staying in a nice hotel for 3 days that offered a truly splendid cooked breakfast in the mornings. I hadn’t started the day with kippers for a very long time! Might need to go on a diet for a few days though….

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University Admissions in Uncharted Territory

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , , on October 26, 2011 by telescoper

It turns out I have a few minutes spare before going to our staff Away (half) Day this afternoon, so I thought I’d pass on another interesting bit of news that came out this week.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Services, known to all and sundry as UCAS, has released some interesting statistical information on numbers of applicants to UK universities and how this compares with the corresponding stage in the admissions timetable last year.

We’re still very early on in the process so it would be unwise to read too much into the figures available so far. The big question, however, is whether the ConDem government’s decision to raise fees for university students to £9K per annum has had any effect on the number of students applying. In fact the headline figure is that after several years of growth in overall applicant numbers, the figures for 2012 entry are down 9% on last year. Still early days, of course, but it does look like the new fee levels may be having the deterrent effect we all expected.

Another interesting thing that struck me, from Table 6 of the UCAS analysis, is that the number of students applying to study courses in the physical sciences (including Physics & Astronomy) is down by just 1.6% on the same stage last year, compared to an average of 7.9% across all subjects. (Note that this is not the same as the 9% mentioned above, because students get more than one choice of course..).

Of particular interest to us in Wales is the breakdown of applicants by domicile and choice of institution.  From Table 4 we see that the number of English students applying to Welsh Universities is down 13.4%, while the number of Welsh-domiciled students applying to study in England is down by only 4.3%. If this differential persists then it will have a big impact on the Welsh Higher Education sector, because of the Welsh Assembly Government’s decision to cut funding for Welsh Universities in order to pay for its  subsidy for  Welsh students wanting to study in England.

It’s too early to predict what will happen to overall student numbers for 2012/13, but I’m sure planning officers in universities all around the UK will be looking at the interim figures with a considerable degree of anxiety.

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A-Level Further Mathematics Examination, 1981

Posted in Education with tags , , on October 24, 2011 by telescoper

I’ve been forcibly evicted from my office this afternoon while a highly-trained operative of Cardiff University’s esteemed Estates Department replaces a broken window. It’s been broken since I moved into the office, about four years ago, by the way, but you can’t rush these things. Anyway, having been forced to change location I took the opportunity to decamp to the upstairs computer room wherein our departmental scanner resides and occupied myself with the task of scanning in yet another of the old examinations I took when I was in school. This one is the Further Mathematics examination, consisting of two papers each of three hours’ duration: Paper 1 is entirely Pure Mathematics; Paper 2 contains a mixture of Pure and Applied Mathematics, and Statistics.

Looking back on the paper now, thirty years after I first saw it, it seems to me that the Applied Mathematics questions (6-11 on Paper 2) actually look quite tough by the standard of 1st year undergraduate examinations in mechanics. However, I’ll leave it to you to comment on whether you think it’s harder, or easier, or about the same, compared to current A-levels in Further Mathematics. I’d also be interested in knowing whether there’s anything on these papers that isn’t on the syllabus nowadays.

The comments box awaits…

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The Physics of the Pole Vault

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on October 17, 2011 by telescoper

At the RAS Club Dinner last Friday I chatted for a while with my former DPhil supervisor, John Barrow. I’m not sure how, but the topic came up about how helpful it is to use sports to teach physics. By coincidence he chose the same example as I have used in the past during first-year tutorials,  the pole vault.

Years ago I went to watch an athletics meeting at Gateshead Stadium and sat right next to the pole vault area. I can tell you that the height the vaulters reach is truly spectacular, especially when you’re close to the action. The current world record for the pole vault is 6.14m, in fact, set by the legendary Sergey Bubka in 1994, so the record hasn’t been broken for 17 years. Here’s a clip of him a few years earlier clearing a mere 6.10 metres (pretty comfortably, by the look of it)…

One might infer, from the fact that the record has not been broken for such a long time, that pole vaulters are working pretty much at the limit of what the human body can achieve. And a bit of physics will convince you of the same.

Basically, the pole is a device that converts the horizontal kinetic energy of the vaulter \frac{1}{2} m v^2,  as he/she runs in, to the gravitational potential energy m g h acquired at the apex of his/her  vertical motion, i.e. at the top of the vault.

Now assume that the approach is at the speed of a sprinter, i.e. about 10 ms^{-1}, and work out the height h = v^2/2g that the vaulter can gain if the kinetic energy is converted with 100% efficiency. Since g = 9.8 ms^{-2} the answer turns out to be about 5 metres.

This suggests that  6.15 metres should not just be at, but beyond, the limit of a human vaulter,  unless the pole were super-elastic. However, there are two things that help. The first is that the centre of mass of the combined vaulter-plus-pole does not start at ground level; it is at a height of a bit less than 1m for an an average-sized person.  Nor does the centre of mass of the vaulter-pole combination reach 6.15 metres. The pole does not go over the bar, but it’s pretty light so that probably doesn’t make much difference. However, it’s not  obvious that the centre of mass of the vaulter actually passes over the bar.  That certainly doesn’t happen in the high jump – owing to the flexibility of the jumper’s back the arc is such that the centre of mass remains under the bar while the different parts of the jumper’s body go over it.

Moreover, it’s not just the kinetic energy of the vaulter that’s involved. A human can in fact jump vertically from a standing position, using elastic energy stored in muscles. One can’t jump very high like that, but it seems likely to me that this accounts for a few tens of centimetres.

Anyway, it is clear that pole vaulters are remarkably efficient athletes. And not a little brave either – as someone who is scared of heights I can tell you that I’d be absolutely terrifed being shot up to 6.15 metres on the end of  a bendy stick, even with something soft to land on!

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Another day, another tutorial…

Posted in Education, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on October 13, 2011 by telescoper

Oh what fun it is to derive the Bohr radius. At least the camera on my Blackberry works!

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Who needs the University of Wales?

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , , on October 12, 2011 by telescoper

I couldn’t resist a quick  and possibly inflammatory, comment about the University of Wales affair.

I’m not sure how much this story has spread outside Wales, but it’s relatively easy to summarise quickly.  The University of Wales has had a complicated history which I won’t go into details about, but in essence it used to be the only University in Wales; my current employer, Cardiff University, for example, was for a long time a College of the University of Wales.  In 1992 the special status of the University of Wales changed when the former Polytechnic of Wales became the University of Glamorgan. In subsequent years a number of institutions within the University of Wales, including the College of  Cardiff in 2004, sought and were granted the ability to award their own degrees rather than degrees accredited by the University of Wales and so effectively became independent. As  a consequence, the importance of the University of Wales in the landscape of Welsh Higher Education rapidly dwindled to the point where it was a “rump” of an institution accrediting degrees for just a few relatively small institutes.

Having spent some time in my career working in London, it seems to me that there’s at least superficially a  striking parallel between the situation in Wales and that surrounding the former colleges of the University of London, most of which now award their own degrees rather than University of London degrees. The University of London nevertheless still exists, though I’ve never really understood why.

It tends to be the case that administrative structures refuse to die a natural death but instead try to find new things to administer. In order to justify itself, the University of Wales diversified into accrediting degrees from a host of smaller institutions both at home and abroad.  To cut several long stories very short, much of its business in recent years has been dodgy to say the least.  The University of Wales’ involvement in visa scams and  the selling of bogus degrees are just two of the revelations that have led to many calling for the organisation to be scrapped altogether, prominent among them being the Welsh Assembly Minister responsible for higher education, Leighton Andrews.

The University of Wales “brand” has now become so tarnished that some of   Welsh Higher Education institutions whose degrees it accredits now seem anxious to sever their ties altogether. The University of Wales, Institute of Cardiff (UWIC) wishes to change its name to Cardiff Metropolitan University and award its own degrees.

I think it’s quite clear that the University of Wales is now damaged beyond repair and should be dissolved, although the mechanism by which this can be achieved is unclear as universities are  independent charitable institutions, not run directly from government.  So egregious has been the conduct of the senior management of this organisation, however, that I’m sure a way can be found to wind it up. I just can’t see how it can possibly survive these scandals.

Unfortunately, dissolution  in itself will not repair the damage already done; some institutions under the University of Wales umbrella will surely find that, through no fault of their own, a great deal of mud will stick.

Leighton Andrews has already called – rightly, in my view – for a reduction in the number of universities in Wales, most of which are small. In my neck of the woods, South-east Wales, for example, a game of musical mergers has been going on for months already between UWIC, Glamorgan and the University of Wales, Newport but no concrete plans have emerged. In my opinion the region can only sustain one world-class, research intensive university and one teaching led “new” university. Will  the  chaos generated by the public disintegration of the University of Wales make it easier or harder to achieve this?

But I can’t help feel sad about the inevitable demise of the University of Wales, which seems to me to be more of a tragedy than a farce. Its problems can all be traced back to the terrible decision,  taken by the Conservative government in 1992, to allow the polytechnics to call themselves universities. Wales was much better off when it had one University and one Polytechnic, and neither had to prostitute itself to make ends meet.

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The Three Es for Lecturing

Posted in Education with tags , , , , on October 5, 2011 by telescoper

Yet another very busy day looms in front of me. I’m off to the smoky bigness of London for an examiners’ meeting at Queen Mary this afternoon, but before that I have to squeeze in my first tutorial of the year, with a group of fresh-faced freshers. Actually I don’t know if they’re fresh faced or not because I haven’t met them yet. I had my first teaching encounter with the first years yesterday morning during an exercise class on mechanics, which I enjoyed despite some teething troubles with the facilities in the room we were using. I was very happy with the way the students chipped freely in with answers whenever I asked questions, which is a good sign.

A while ago I attended a session on teaching for our new lecturers. Actually I didn’t attend most of it, I just dropped in at the end to deliver a few tips I’ve picked up from observing other lecturers. Here in Cardiff we have “peer observation” of lectures in which one member of teaching staff sits in on a lecture by another, followed by a feedback and discussion session. While I was at Nottingham it was a different system; two nominated staff members (myself and another Professor) sat in on  lectures by each of the other staff. It was a lot of work, but gave me the chance to see quite a lot of different approaches to teaching and was consequently very interesting.

Anyway, over the years it became obvious that there are some obvious basics which lecturers need to do in order to teach competently, including being prepared, talking sufficiently loudly, writing clearly (if relevant), and so on. And of course turning up at the right theatre at the right time. But there are also those things that turn mere competence into excellence. Of course there are many ways to lecture, and you have to put your own personality into what you do, but the main tips I’d pass on to make your lecturers really popular can be boiled down into the Three Es. I add that these are things that struck me while watching others lecture, rather than me claiming to be brilliant myself (which I know I’m not). Anyway, here we go:

Enthusiasm. The single most obvious response on student questionnaires about lecturing refers to enthusiasm. My take on this is that we’re all professional physicists, earning our keep by doing physics. If we can’t be enthusiastic about it then it’s clearly unreasonable to expect the students to get fired up. So convey the excitement of the subject! I don’t mean by descending into vacuous gee-whizz stuff, but by explaining how interesting things are when you look at them properly as a physicist, mathematics and all.

Engagement. This one cuts both ways. First it is essential to look at your audience, ask questions, and make them feel that they are part of a shared experience not just listening to a monologue. The latter might be fine for a public lecture, but if a teaching session is to be successful as a pedagogical exercise it can’t be passive. And if you ask a question of the audience, make your body language tell them that it’s not just rhetorical; if you don’t look like you want an answer, you won’t get one. More importantly, try to cultivate an atmosphere wherein the students feel they can contribute. You know you’ve succeeded in this when students point out mistakes you have made. On the other hand, you can’t take this too far. The lecturer is the person who is supposed to know the stuff so fundamentally there’s no symmetry between you and the audience. You have to be authoritative, though that doesn’t mean you have to behave like a schoolmaster. Know your subject, explain it well and you’ll earn respect without needing to bluster.

Entertainment. To be absolutely honest, I think lectures  are a  fairly useless as a way of teaching physics. That is not to say that they don’t have a role, which I think is to highlight key concepts and demonstrate their applicability;  the rest, the details, the nuts and bolts are best done by problem-based learning. I therefore think it does no harm at all if you make your lectures enjoyable as pieces of entertainment. By all means introduce the odd joke, refer to surprising examples, amusing analogies, and so on.  As long as you don’t overdo it, you’ll find that a bit of light relief will keep the attention levels up. A key element of this is spontaneity. A lecture should appear as if it develops naturally, in an almost improvised fashion. Of course your spontaneity will probably have to  be very carefully rehearsed, but the sense of a live performance always adds value. A lecture should be a happening, not just a presentation. Lecture demonstrations also play this role, although they seem to be deployed less frequently  nowadays than in the past. Being a showman doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and the audience will know if you’re forcing it so don’t act unnaturally, but at the very least try to move about. Believe me, watching a lecturer drone on for an hour while rooted to the spot is a very tedious experience. You’d be surprised how much difference it makes if you can convey at least the impression of being alive.

On this last point, I’ll offer a few quotes from a physicist who definitely knew a thing or two about lecturing, Michael Faraday. First his opinion was that the lecturer should not be

…glued to the table or screwed to the floor. He must by all means appear as a body distinct and separate from the things around, and must have some motion apart from that which they possess.

Conventional wisdom nowadays suggests that one should take breaks in lectures to stop students losing concentration. I’m not sure I agree with this, actually. It’s certainly the case that attention will flag if you persist with a dreary monotone for an hour, but  I think a lecture can have a natural dynamic to it which keeps the students interested by variation rather than interruption. Faraday also thought this.

A flame should be lighted at the commencement and kept alive with unremitting splendour to the end…I very much disapprove of breaks in the lecture.

Finally, here is one of my all-time  favourite physics quotes, Faraday’s take on the need for lectures to be entertaining:

..for though to all true philosophers science and nature will have charms innumerable in every dress, yet I am sorry to say that the generality of mankind cannot accompany us one short hour unless the path is strewn with flowers.

Well, that’s all I have time for, but please offer your own tips through the comments box if you feel so motivated!

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Why go to University?

Posted in Education with tags , , on September 29, 2011 by telescoper

I’ve just got time this morning before the Astronomy Grants Panel reconvenes for another day of deliberations to put up a quick postette. I thought of this quote the other day when we were inducing inducting inductifying enrolling the new undergraduates. I think it encapsulates what I think a university actually is, specifically why it’s essential for a University education to be part of an environment that also encompasses research, and why even in the digital age (and beyond),  personal interaction between student and teacher will always be essential. Call me old-fashioned.

The general principles of any study you may learn by books at home; but the detail, the colour, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives already.

From The Idea of a University, by Cardinal John H. Newman, Chapter 2.

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