Senior Physics Challenge

The fourth annual Senior Physics Challenge, sponsored by The Ogden Trust, was held at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge in June 2009.   Emma COlliver recieving her SPC certificate
 
The Senior Physics Challenge is a five-day summer school for students who have just finished their AS year, which aims to make the transition to university physics in the UK more accessible to a wider range of students.  It is organised by Professor Mark Warner and Dr Anson Cheung pictured right with Emma Colliver, an Ogden scholar at St Paul's Girls' School, London.
 
Participants are selected from state and independent schools from all over the UK.
 
Teachers are asked to nominate one or two high achieving students for the course who have shown aptitude for physics and mathematical thinking, shown promise at GCSE and during their AS year, and must be taking Physics and Mathematics forward to A2. Up to 80 students attend the course, staying in various Cambridge colleges. The programme consists of lectures and lab work, culminating in a competition to design and build a water propelled rocket, as well as some guidance on university admissions. The content is at a university undergraduate level, and this year's topics included Newtonian Mechanics, Orbital Dynamics, Kinetic Theory and Special Relativity.
 
 
The programme was established to expose AS students to the style and analytical power of university level physics and give them practical lab work of the type undertaken by first year undergraduates. Feedback from students suggests that they  enjoy the challenge of attempting such high level work and over 70% state that their desire to study physics at university has increased as a direct result of the course.
 
In parallel with the Challenge is the training camp for the five finalists who make up the UK team for the International Physics Olympiad and the SPC students have a chance to meet them.
 
Contact details: www.spc.phy.cam.ac.uk, Dr Anson Cheung and Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright.