• Total units 24 Units
  • Areas of interest Physics
  • Specialisation code ADPH-SPEC

Corequisite majors: Physics or Astronomy and Astrophysics


The Advanced Physics specialisation builds on majors in either Physics or Astronomy and Astrophysics to provide a broader and deeper mastery of Physics. This will enable students to understand a greater variety of physical phenomena at an increased level of sophistication. Students who complete the Advanced Physics specialisation will therefore have an increased range of career and academic options.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Describe and explain, in depth, the full range of fundamental principles of physics, including those of: mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal and statistical physics.

  2. Apply the fundamental principles of physics to solve a broad range of sophisticated problems, including those likely to be encountered in future careers. Such problems may involve ambiguity and uncertainty and require the application of multiple principles.

  3. Integrate the fundamental principles of physics to describe and explain in depth a broad range of specialised areas of physics.

  4. Describe and explain in depth a broad range of specific examples of how physics is applied to benefit people.

  5. Describe in depth critical experiments in the history of physics and explain how they led to revisions of our theoretical descriptions of nature.

  6. Use mathematical, computational and experimental skills to solve sophisticated conceptual and quantitative problems across a broad range of physics.

  7. Demonstrate high level skills including: equipment familiarity, data gathering, record keeping, data analysis, dealing with uncertainty, experiment design, and comparison with theory.

  8. Analyse complex and unfamiliar physical systems and provide order-of-magnitude estimates of quantities. This includes a knowledge of basic physical constants and key equations.

  9. Be both creative and rigorous in the design and construction of scientific investigations of physical systems across a broad range of areas of physics.

  10. Be able to effectively communicate sophisticated physics based analyses to expert and non-expert audiences.

  11. Be able to constructively criticise evidence, arguments and conclusions wherever they are encountered.

Other Information

The Advanced Physics specialisation is recommended for those planning on taking the fourth year honours degree in Physics.

Students should seek further course advice from the academic convener of the Advanced Physics specialisation.

A specialisation in Advanced Physics must be taken in conjunction with a Physics or an Astronomy and Astrophysics major.

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Requirements

This specialisation requires the completion of 24 units, which must include:

A maximum of 12 units from the completion of 2000- level courses from the subject area PHYS- Physics

A minimum of 12 units from the completion of 3000- level courses which may come from:

The following subject areas:

PHYS - Physics

ASTR - Astronomy and Astrophysics

The following course list:

MATH3511 - Scientific Computing (6 units)

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