The Ogden Trust

The Senior Physics Challenge (SPC) is a residential five-day summer school programme for 70 students, which develops and enhances A-level physics to promote wider university access. This initiative is run by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physics and students are accommodated in Cambridge colleges. The programme targets students at the end of their AS year. Teachers nominate maximum two students per school and there is no charge to attend.

This programme seeks to reverse the drop in students wishing to study physics at university by making it more accessible and by giving them experience of the transition from the type of physics taught at school to that which is taught at universities.

Activities include physics problem-solving which incorporates Cambridge first year mechanics and relativity, laboratory classes (laser diffraction, radiation laws, mechanics), physics research lectures, a physics estimation evening and a talk about university physics and admissions. 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.