University of the West of Scotland

Physics @ UWS

Ryzo95

Anybody applied/received offer for Physics at UWS :cool:

Reply 1

qno2

TBH if the 2013 cohort of 1st years are anything like this year, most of them will not have applied yet as I'm sure nearly everyone doing physics got in through clearing or put it as an insurance choice. Not trying to put a damper on your spirits BTW...

University of the West of Scotland

Reply 2

Ryzo95

Got an unconditional for UWS but plan to use that as insurance got conditionals for Glasgow and Strathclyde, planning to put Strathclyde as firm. Just wondering what UWS was like went to open day, but never really found it that interesting

Reply 3

qno2

It's probably much like what you saw. Just out of intrest, what happened on the open days? (i.e. Who spoke to you and stuff.) I'm kinda interested to find out what they do to convince you that you should do Physics there. :tongue:

Reply 4

Ryzo95

Cant remember the name of the lecturer - he was German ?? I think, just showed us a couple of labs, and talked a bit about 1st year course - he said about 75% was duplicating the ADH Physics course. Have been to the union myself before so I knew what that was like and wasnt interested in the accomodation. Quite liked the fact it would be small lab groups and that the lectures/labs were grouped together over 2-3 days. How do you find it?

Reply 5

qno2

German guy is probably Dr Spor (Not sure of the spelling) he doesn't have any 1st year teaching anyway so I don't really know him. 1st year is just AH physics with extra bits about thermal physics (stuff thats mostly done in AH chemistry, so I'm told) and a section on "modern physics" which should be the most interesting bit of first year but we have one of the most boring lecturers for it who has also spent way too much time talking about the historical development of physics. He spent nearly a whole hour on something called the "plum-pudding" model of the atom which is wrong. Your sitting there and suddenly realise "why are we doing this; it's wrong! This is science where we only have right wrong and in the case of physics, probably right." Just a little insight: there are about 35-40 1st year physics students, 12ish 2nd years, 6 3rd years and 2 4th years so make of that what you will :tongue:

I'm not sure how the timetable system was explained to you but it works that all the activities for a module happen on the same day (e.g. on Thursdays we have physics lectures from 10-1 and labs or tutorials from 2-4.) The worst thing about this is that we only get about 10ish hours of contact time each week which is not good for me I don't think as I have Mondays and Tuesdays off with Fridays being a complete waste of time. If you go to UWS in the end, you will have a optional module in 2nd semester. Don't pick Scientific Investigation as the module descriptor is very misleading and the content is all forensics which is soo boring. If you need to know anything else, just ask.

FYI I'm transferring to Heriot-Watt for 2nd year onwards (doing Mathematical Physics.) I also got an offer for 2nd year of maths and physics at Strathclyde. :tongue:

Reply 6

Ryzo95

Thanks for info, really hoping to get to Strathclyde my conditions were pretty low in comparison to Glasgow. From going to the applicants day it seems really easy to move from BSC to Masters if your grades are good enough. Congrats on getting to Heriot-Watt :smile: