[Bleakside]

Hey, I originally joined TSR when I was doing an art and design access course, I then went to undertake a design bachelors at university. Suffice to say I came out, two years later, completely disenchanted. I've taken a swing around after working and now have found an interest in physics.

I've always been pretty good at maths and science so that's not really an issue, I can pick up knowledge on understanding maths and science pretty easily. Rather it's a convenience issue. As a married 20-something, I am restrained as to where I can move. Currently living in East Anglia (shudders, Essex) we are moving back to Berkshire in a few months but we will still need to work full time. I didn't do well at school when I know I could have done (bad crowd etc etc), so I'm going to have to take A Levels in Maths and Physics (I have no A Levels at all, by the way), I'm considering taking Chemistry as a third subject, not decided on a fourth yet. At any rate, I can't decide whether I should try and find evening classes to undertake these subjects, or do distance learning which means doing it in my own time. Furthermore, regarding calculus, do you learn this at A Level? Or do you go into uni and they expect to "get it" when they throw it at you? I'm looking to go to uni at UCL or KCL as they are not too far from where I will be.

[theandyguthrie]

If you want to study physics at UCL you should probably consider further maths and your 3rd/4th a-level.

and calculus is a very broad topic, you do quite a lot of it at a-level though. But it's pretty easy at AS level - it gets quite involved by c4 though.

[Bleakside]

Cheers andy

[Hathlan]

(Original post by Bleakside)
Hey, I originally joined TSR when I was doing an art and design access course, I then went to undertake a design bachelors at university. Suffice to say I came out, two years later, completely disenchanted. I've taken a swing around after working and now have found an interest in physics.

I've always been pretty good at maths and science so that's not really an issue, I can pick up knowledge on understanding maths and science pretty easily. Rather it's a convenience issue. As a married 20-something, I am restrained as to where I can move. Currently living in East Anglia (shudders, Essex) we are moving back to Berkshire in a few months but we will still need to work full time. I didn't do well at school when I know I could have done (bad crowd etc etc), so I'm going to have to take A Levels in Maths and Physics (I have no A Levels at all, by the way), I'm considering taking Chemistry as a third subject, not decided on a fourth yet. At any rate, I can't decide whether I should try and find evening classes to undertake these subjects, or do distance learning which means doing it in my own time. Furthermore, regarding calculus, do you learn this at A Level? Or do you go into uni and they expect to "get it" when they throw it at you? I'm looking to go to uni at UCL or KCL as they are not too far from where I will be.

What do you mean by calculus? You do a lot of integrating and differentiating at A-level, but you don't need to understand how it works or really know what's going on at all. You just get given some rules and perform them. I don't know why people think "calculus" is a really big deal(in terms of hard-to-learn. It's a big deal in terms of you'll-use-it-helluva-lot)?

Also, I think further maths would be more useful to you than chemistry, as well as a lot less work, if you're actually any good at maths. From what I've seen of physics courses at my university, they rely on you having pretty solid maths.

[Bleakside]

You don't have to understand how it works, you just gotta know how to do it?

Oh goodness that's saved me a lot of headache haha. Thanks