Prof Brian Cox got a D in a-level maths!

his job as a physicist is not to do IMO/IPO problems, it's to do physics research.

This. It turns out that being good at IMO problems isn't particularly useful for making ground breaking discoveries in science. Academia is more interested in people who are capable of researching than people who are good at silly 6 hour long tests.

Money that could be spent on better things; they're spending billions on silly machines and whatnot at CERN, whilst people starve.

Maybe because he's an absolute genius?

Intelligence is more than a few letters on a gilded piece of paper.
And no-one's good at everything, after all.

Rote learning/model solutions, even people on here will testify to that.

I'm not angry, but I'm bitter because he's dumbing down science and making money by being a poser.

they're spending billions on silly machines and whatnot at CERN, whilst people starve.

The programmes are only dumbed down so that the majority of the people who would be interested in them, can actually understand it. It's all very well you lot saying how simple it is with your A* in A-level physics and maths, but to ordinary people such as my mum who is a reasonably clever person (History degree from UEA) but hasn't studied physics since before her O-levels and she's now nearly fifty, she is interlectual enough to find all the physics interesting but needs it at that level to understand it. She often records horizon for me, but often gives up watching it herself as the science and maths often egt's to complicated, but you wouldn't call her a stupid person.

Prof Cox is jsut trying to make physics accessable and interesting to the masses and can clearly understand more andvanced stuff.

To the wider readership of this thread - sadly, having worked in a physics department for a number of years conducting experimental research, I can attest that the attitude displayed by Physics Enemy (about experimental physics, not about pre-uni exams being more important that following achievements) is far too common amongst certain sections in the theoretical community. Looking at it from the point of view of a scientifically literate outsider (a chemist), it's clear that academic physics has a serious cultural problem in that many students feel that experimental physics is not 'proper' physics and is 'easy' some of these attitudes persist into academia because these people have never actually done a research experiment in their lives and think that all experimentation is as tedious and pointless as the handful of basic teaching experiments they did in the first years of their degrees.

What are you up to these days? Did your education get you anywhere?

These days I am doing a part-time PhD, having given up a pretty good career in academic admin (I was on around 45k p/a until two years ago). As to my education getting me anywhere, it's not a relevant question in my mind; what my education got me was inspiration, insight, perpective, intellectual stimulation and, I hope and think, a good mind. It's kind of old-fashioned to say so these days but education has its own value and for me it was never a means to an end - I have never been a materialistic or career-orientated person, and as longs as I have been able to make ends meet comfortably enough, what I do with my days is more important to me than what it pays.

So? That's the same for any examination.

Oh, and conducted and published research on high energy particle physics in respected academic journals. You seem to be keen to overlook that.

I suspect he probably could now. I'm sure I could get an A* in A-level Chemisty now without much effort, doesn't change the fact that I got a B at the time. I don't see what your point is there. Also, why are we 'pissing away' IMO/IPO medallists? Where is your evidence that Cox is depriving someone more deserving of a research position?

It's okay telling us what *you* think would be better for research, but who are you to make that judgement? What research experience do you have?

Okay, so you don't like the LHC and so it wouldn't matter if Cox had straight A*'s, that's the real axe you are grinding here.

You do realise that experiment is the one thing that a) underpins science and b) seperates science from other forms of knowledge gathering exercise. String theory is just a pipe dream until it can be experimentally validated, as such, just focussing on high level mathematically theory in physics stops it from being a science.

You really don't get science do you?
Also, you may want to get off the internet then, as the world wide web was something that came out of CERN.