Description:
The Physics minor introduces the fundamentals of Physics. It aims to provide a balance of knowledge and skills for those whose major is in an area other than physics. Skills include: problem solving, data gathering, data analysis, and experiment design.
The minor will prepare students for careers in which the physical sciences are used, including: research, teaching, and industry.
Learning Outcomes
Students who complete the Physics minor will be able to:
- Describe and explain some of the fundamental principles of physics.
- Apply the fundamental principles of physics to solve elementary problems, including those likely to be encountered in future careers. Such problems may involve ambiguity and uncertainty and require the application of multiple principles.
- Describe and explain specific examples of how physics is applied to benefit people.
- Describe some critical experiments in the history of physics and explain how they led to revisions of our theoretical descriptions of nature.
- Use mathematical, computational and experimental skills to solve elementary conceptual and quantitative problems in physics.
- Demonstrate skills including: equipment familiarity, data gathering, record keeping, data analysis, dealing with uncertainty, experiment design, and comparison with theory.
- Analyse unfamiliar physical systems and provide order-of-magnitude estimates of quantities. This includes knowledge of basic physical constants and key equations.
- Be both creative and rigorous in the design and construction of scientific investigations of physical systems.
- Effectively communicate physics based analyses to expert and non-expert audiences.
- Constructively criticise evidence, arguments and conclusions wherever they are encountered.
Other Information
Advice to Students
What 1st year courses should you enrol in? PHYS1101
and PHYS1201. PHYS1101 has a corequisite of either
MATH1013 or MATH1115. PHYS1201 has a corequisite of either MATH1014 or
MATH1116.
Students should seek further course advice from the academic convener of this Physics minor.
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Requirements
12 units from completion of the following course(s):
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| PHYS1101 | Physics I | 6 |
| PHYS1201 | Physics 2 | 6 |
12 units from completion of the following course(s):
2000/3000 level Physics (PHYS) / Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASTR) courses
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