In response to a request to a while ago when I posted the Mathematics paper, here is the Physics paper I took as part of the Cambridge Entrance Examinations way back in 1981.
I’ve decided to try out Qu. 13 on my third-year students doing Nuclear and Particle Physics this year just for fun. Other comments on the content and/or difficulty are welcome through the box below!
Follow @telescoperI realise that yesterday I said I only had time for a quick post, and then proceeded to write >1000 words on the subject of Masters degrees. Today I really only have time for a quick post, as I have to finish writing my examination paper (amongst other things).
Anyway, I haven’t blogged about crosswords for a while so I just thought mention a few things. Some time ago I switched from the Guardian to the Independent on Saturdays. The Guardian is a sad case. As its circulation falls, the price continues to rise. It is now getting more expensive virtually by the week. It comes with stacks of tedious supplements which go straight into the recycling bin anyway. There’s much less of the Independent and it’s both higher quality and cheaper. There’s a lesson there for the Grauniad, I think.
More importantly (for me) the Guardian’s crosswords have gone rapidly downhill and I much prefer the Independent’s setters nowadays. I do occasionally do the Grauniad prize one by downloading it from the net, especially if it’s Araucaria, but most of the other setters are nowhere near as good. Since I started doing the Indy crossword last year I’ve won the prize, a rather splendid dictionary, three times. I’ve got one in my study at home and one in my office. The other I gave to my mum. If I win any more I’m not sure how I’ll dispose of them. Perhaps I could open a shop?
The magazine bit of the Independent has a more difficult crossword called Inquisitor. I’m not sure about these at all. Sometimes they’re really good, but too often they require so many modifications to be made to each solution before entry into the grid that they become completely tedious, and the completed puzzle just looks like a random jumble of letters. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my crosswords to have words in them. Last week’s (Inquisitor 1217) was an extreme example, with “thematic modifications” all over the place and some parts of the puzzle completely unclued. It turned out that you had to remove every third letter of each solution before entering it into the grid, the theme being an obscure and entirely unclued reference to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner “And he stoppeth one of three”. I got there in the end – I find I can’t leave a puzzle incomplete once I’ve started – but I didn’t post it off in protest at how unsatisfying it was. I don’t mind difficult puzzles, but they have to be fair: leaving huge parts of the puzzle unclued means that it’s just guesswork rather than logic.
My favourite crossword is still Azed in the Observer. I got off to a good start in this year’s clue setting competition with a run of VHCs (“Very Highly Commended”). However, I didn’t have time to do the Christmas Azed and have therefore slipped down the league table a bit.
I got an HC in the last competition, No. 2070, in which the word to be clued was MISTREATMENT. My clue was
Kinky “Master” welcoming one into pain or wanting abuse
i.e. anagram of MASTER including I running into TORMENT with OR missing (wanting); abuse is the definition. It’s OK I suppose but admittedly not as good as the prize-winning entries.
This word is tailor-made for an &lit type of clue, which Azed seems to like. The winning entry for this one was of this type
Abuse T. Emin’s art met?
So you can read this as “abuse” (an anagram indicator) of the subsequent letters to make MISTREATMENT or the whole clue itself as a definition. Azed seems to allow a lot of slack in the definition part of such clues, but I’m not at all convinced that “T. Emin’s art” has ever been actually mistreated so I don’t like this as much as some of the other clues. It’s not my decision, however, and I have to say some of the clues in the list are really superb, much better than my mundane effort.
I love solving crossword puzzles, but I find setting the clues extremely difficult. I think I’m the same way with physics too. I like solving – or trying to solve – problems of various kinds, but I find setting them very hard work. That’s why it takes me so long to write examination papers, and why I consequently have to go into the office on a lovely spring sunday. It would be much easier to set exactly the same paper as last year, but of course no self-respecting university teacher would ever even dream of doing that….
Follow @telescoperAnd if I should falter
Would you open your arms out to me?
After a day in London away from the department for the “Kick-off” meeting of this year’s Astronomy Grants Panel I find myself back in lovely sunny Cardiff with a mountain of things to catch up on: exams to set, forms to fill in, postgraduate interviews to arrange, forms to fill in, references to write, forms to fill in, lectures to prepare, oh and some forms to fill in. I’ll therefore keep this brief before grabbing a bite to eat and heading off to the department for an afternoon in the office.
Quite a few times recently, current and prospective students (or parents thereof) have asked me what the difference is between an MSc and an MSci or equivalent (which, at least in Cardiff, exists in various flavours according to the specialism, i.e. MPhys, MChem, etc). I have to admit that it’s all very confusing so here’s my attempt to explain.
The main distinction is that the MSc “Master of Science” is a (taught) postgraduate (PG) degree, usually of one year’s duration, whereas the MPhys etc are undergraduate (UG) degrees usually lasting 4 years. This means that students wanting to do an MSc must already have completed a degree programme (and usually have been awarded at least Second Class Honours) before starting an MSc.
Undergraduate students wanting to do Physics in the School of Physics & Astronomy at Cardiff University, for example, can opt for either the 3-year BSc or the 4-year MPhys programmes. However, choosing the 4-year option does not lead to the award of a BSc degree and then a subsequent Masters qualification; graduating students get a single qualification.
It is possible for a student to take a BSc and then do a taught MSc programme afterwards, perhaps at a different university, but there are relatively few MSC programmes for Physics in the UK because the vast majority of students who are interested in postgraduate study will already have registered for 4-year undergraduate programmes. That’s not to say there are none, however. There are notable MSc programmes dotted around, but they tend to be rather specialist; examples related to my own area include Astronomy and Cosmology at Sussex and Astrophysics at Queen Mary. The only MSc programme we have in my department is in Biophotonics. To a large extent these courses survive by recruiting students from outside the UK because the market from home students is so small. No department can afford to put on an entire MSc programme for the benefit of just one or two students.
So why does it matter whether one Masters is PG while the other is UG? One difference is that the MSc lasts a calendar year (rather than an academic year). In terms of material covered, this means it contains 180 credits compared to the 120 credits of an undergraduate programme. Typically the MSc will have 120 credits of courses, examined in June as with UG programmes, followed by 60 credits worth of project work over the summer, handed in in September.
The reason why this question comes up so frequently nowadays is that the current generation of applicants to university (and their parents) are facing up to fees of £9K per annum. The cost of doing a 3-year BSc is then about £27K compared to £36K for an MPhys. When rushing through the legislation to allow universities to charge this amount, the Powers That Be completely forgot about PG programmes, which have accordingly maintained their fees at a similar level. For example, the MSc Astronomy at Sussex attracts a fee of about £5K for home students and about £15K for overseas students. These levels are roughly consistent with the UG fees paid by existing home students (approx £3.5K per annum, bearing in mind that you get 1.5 times as much teaching on an MSc compared to a year of an MPhys).
Being intelligent people, prospective physicists look at the extra £9K they have to pay for the 4th year of an MPhys and compare it with the current rate for an entire MSc and come to the conclusion that they should just do a BSc then switch. This seems to be not an unreasonable calculation to make.
However, there are some important things to bear in mind. Firstly, unlike UG programmes, the fee for PG programmes is basically unregulated. Universities can charge whatever they like and can increase them in the future if they decide to. See, for example, the list at Cardiff University which shows that MSc fees already vary by more than a factorof four from one school to another. Incidentally, that in itself shows the absurdity of charging the same fee for UG degrees regardless of subject…
Now the point is that if one academic year of UG teaching is going cost £9K for future students, there is no way any department can justify putting on an entire calendar of advanced courses (i.e. 50% more teaching at an extremely specialist level) for half tthe income per student. The logical fee level for MSc programmes must rise to a mininum of about 1.5 times the UG fee, which is a whopping £13.5K (similar to the current whopping amount already paid by overseas students). It’s therefore clear that you cannot take the current MSc fee levels as a guide to what they will be in three years’ time, when you will qualify to enter a taught PG programme. Prices will certainly have risen by then.
Moreover, it’s much harder to get financial support for postgraduate than undergraduate study. MSc students do not qualify for student loans as undergraduates do, for example. Also the MSc fee usually has to be paid in full, up front, not collected later when your income exceeds some level. Some PG courses do run their own bursary schemes, but generally speaking students on taught PG programmes have to find their own funding.
In summary I’d say that, contrary to what many people seem to think, if you take into the full up-front fee and the lack of student loans etc, the cost of a BSc + MSc is already significantly greater than doing an MPhys, and in future the cost of the former route will inevitably increase. I therefore don’t think this is a sensible path for most Physics undergraduates to take, assuming that they want their MSc to qualify them for a career in Physics research, either in a university or a commercial organization, perhaps via the PhD degree, and they’re not so immensely rich that money is no consideration.
The exception to this conclusion is for the student who wishes to switch to another field at Masters level, to do a specialist MSc in a more applied discipline such as medical physics or engineering. Then it might make sense, as long as you can find a way to deal with the increased cost.
In conclusion, though, I have to say that, like many other aspects of Higher Education in the Disunited Kingdom, this system is a mess. I’d prefer to see the unified system of 3 year UG Bachelor degrees, 2-year Masters, and 3-year PhD that pertains throughout most of contintental Europe. To colleagues there our two types of Masters degree and the funding anomalies arising from them look like a complete mess. Which is what they are.
P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out an even worse anomaly. I did a 3-year Honours degree in Natural Science at Cambridge University for which I was awarded not a BSc but a BA (Bachelor of Arts). A year or so later this – miraculously and with no effort on my part – turned into an MA. Work that one out if you can.
Follow @telescoperNot from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality.
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert.
Or else of thee this I prognosticate;
Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.
Sonnet No. 14, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Follow @telescoperYou may recall the kerfuffle last September when physicists connected with the OPERA experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy produced a paper suggesting that neutrinos might travel at speeds greater than that of light. I posted on that story myself and even composed a poem specially for the occasion at no extra charge:
Do neutrinos go faster than light?
Some physicists think that they might.
In the cold light of day,
I am sorry to say,
The story is probably shite
Well news began to break last night that OPERA scientists had identified an error. The first story I read was a bit shaky on the question of attribution, so I decided to sleep on it and see whether anything emerged that seemed sounder before posting on here. Later on last night an item in Nature News appeared which looks a bit better grounded:
But according to a statement OPERA began circulating today, two possible problems have now been found with its set-up. As many physicists had speculated might be the case, both are related to the experiment’s pioneering use of Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to synchronize atomic clocks at each end of its neutrino beam. First, the passage of time on the clocks between the arrival of the synchronizing signal has to be interpolated and OPERA now says this may not have been done correctly. Second, there was a possible faulty connection between the GPS signal and the OPERA master clock.
We should wait for a more definitive announcement from OPERA about these possible errors, but if it does turn out that technical glitches are responsible for the neutrino speed result then it won’t be entirely unexpected. A faulty cable connection does sound a bit lame, however. I hope they weren’t relying on a USB connection….
Anyway, as I mentioned in a comment elsewhere the arXiv paper from OPERA has now received about 230 citations, although it has not appeared in a refereed journal. If it turns out to have been a completely wrong result, what does that tell you about the use of citations to measure “quality”?
UPDATE: There is now an official press release from CERN, confirming the unofficial reports mentioned above:
Follow @telescoperThe OPERA collaboration has informed its funding agencies and host laboratories that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement. These both require further tests with a short pulsed beam. If confirmed, one would increase the size of the measured effect, the other would diminish it. The first possible effect concerns an oscillator used to provide the time stamps for GPS synchronizations. It could have led to an overestimate of the neutrino’s time of flight. The second concerns the optical fibre connector that brings the external GPS signal to the OPERA master clock, which may not have been functioning correctly when the measurements were taken. If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos. The potential extent of these two effects is being studied by the OPERA collaboration. New measurements with short pulsed beams are scheduled for May.
I know a few students of Quantum Mechanics read this blog so here’s a little challenge. View the following video segment featuring Sir Brian of Cox and see if you can spot the deliberate (?) mistake contained therein on the subject of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
When you’ve made up your mind, you can take a peek at the objection that’s been exercising armchair physicists around the twittersphere, and also a more technical argument supporting Prof. Cox’s interpretation from a university in the Midlands.
UPDATE: 23/2/2012 Meanwhile, over the pond, Sean Carroll is on the case.
Follow @telescoperJust time for a quick post this lunchtime, in between meetings and exercise classes. My eye was drawn this morning to an article about a lengthy report from the Institute of Physics that gives an international comparison of citation impact in physics and related fields.
According to the IOP website..
Although the UK is ranked seventh in a list of key competitor countries for the quantity of its physics research output – measured by the number of papers published – the UK is second only to Canada, and now higher than the US, when ranked on the average quality of the UK’s physics research output – measured by the average number of times research papers are cited around world.
The piece also goes on to note that the UK’s share of the total number of research papers written has decreased
For the UK, however, its proportionate decrease in output – from 7.1% of the world’s physics research in 2001 to 6.4% in 2010 – has been accompanied by a celebratory increase in overall, average quality – with the average number of citations of UK research papers rising from 1.24 in 2001 to 1.72 in 2010.
This, of course, assumes that citations measure “quality” but I’ve got no time to argue that point today. What I will do is put up a couple of interesting figures from the report. This one shows that Space Science in the UK (including Astronomy and Astrophysics) holds a much bigger share of the total world output of papers than other disciplines (by a factor of about three):
While this one shows that the “citation impact” for Physics and Space Science roughly track each other…
..apart from the downturn right at the end of the window for space sciences, which, one imagines, might be a result of decisions taken by the management of the Science and Technology Facilities Council over that period.
Our political leaders will be tempted to portray the steady increase of citation impact across fields as a sign of improved quality arising from the various research assessment exercises. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It seems that many developing countries – especially China – are producing more and more scientific papers. This inevitably drives the UK’s share of world productivity down, because our capacity is not increasing. If anything it’s going down, in fact, owing to recent funding cuts. However, the more papers there are, the more reference lists there are, and the more citations there will be. The increase in citation rates may therefore just be a form of inflation.
Anyway, you can download the entire report here (PDF). I’m sure there will be other reactions to it so, as usual, please feel free to comment via the box below…
Follow @telescoperHere’s an exhilarating little duo featuring alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson and the extraordinarily brilliant pianist Tete Montoliu. Lou Donaldson at times sounds more like Charlie Parker than Charlie Parker ever did, but if you’re going to play bebop there’s no better example to follow. Tete Montoliu on the other hand never sounded like anyone other than himself. He was from Barcelona, by the way, and was born completely blind. The tune, written by drummer Denzil Best, is called Wee although it does have an alternative title, Allen’s Alley; it’s yet another one built around the chord changes of Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm. Anyway, it’s a typically intricate and edgy tune that finds these great musicians at their playful best.
Follow @telescoper
In the Dark 