Imperial College London

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The Imperial March: 1st-year Physics by Sinnoh

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Reply 60

Sinnoh

Original post by entertainmyfaith

your timetable sounds intense :hide:

horizons till 6pm?!
a fifty pounds waterstones card :drool:

It's not the 6pm that I mind, it's the fact that by the time it starts, at 4pm, I'll have had 4 hours of labs, plus two 1-hour lectures and I'm worried I'd just be completely spent and just not want to do any work.
I have wanted to start reading a bit more so this is a good opportunity

Original post by Protostar

your course sounds so interesting :gah:

I love multivariable calc, found it pretty easy to get my head around most of it and you're way smarter than me so I'm sure you'll be absolutely fine! :tongue:

those bad bits of the timetable are really bad :afraid:

4 hours of anything in one go is bad but I couldn't think of anything worse than 4 hours of computing (though that may be partially my own bias too :colondollar:

)
nice work on the prize! :biggrin:

don't blame you for not wanting stuff remarked :nah:

Oh stop it you :blush:

I'm sure I'm overhyping it just because of the name and new phrases bouncing around in the programme spec, after all ODEs in further maths looked disgusting at first
And I'm really hoping there is a catch with the 4 hour computing sessions becase there's no way someone could teach for that long...?
and thanks!

Original post by nyxnko_

ooh, hope you get to brush up on your languages again! :gah:

your physics modules have so much maths! :eek:

tuesdays sound really intense :redface:

i read somewhere that wednesday afternoons at unis are usually left free for sports :dontknow:

Indeedy, either I will rediscover a lost love for them or I'll remember why I always hoped that our German teacher wouldn't be in...
If all you knew about my course was my timetable and nothing else, you'd probably think this was a maths and computing degree lol. A lot of the maths lectures apparently fall under mechanics and relativity
Yeah Wednesday afternoons are free at Imperial for that reason but even the mornings are nearly always free in the autumn... I guess it's like school when that one day full of frees means you've got the most hectic timetable on another.

Imperial College London

London

Reply 61

niamhdoesmaths

Original post by Sinnoh

Oh stop it you :blush:

yeah I did the same thing tbh, I was scared it'd be really tough but it actually made loads of sense! as I said, I'm sure you'll be fine :yep:

I'm thinking that too - maybe it'll be like an hour or two teaching and setting a task and then after that you stay until you complete it? that's how ours worked sort of, except we were ""taught"" (very loose meaning of the word lol) in lectures and then set the task in the 2 hour sessions, but we could leave after an hour if we were done :dontknow:

I don't even know if it's a submission based module for you :lol:

Reply 62

nyxnko_

Original post by Sinnoh

Hopefully, it's the former :tongue:

I did think that for a minute :colondollar:

True... Tbh, we did sign up for these hectic timetables when we decided to do STEM subjects :lol:

Reply 63

Lemur14

Volunteer Section Leader

At least with 4 hour computing sessions you'll actually get stuff done...we used to have 90 mins and you'd literally just be getting into it when it was time to stop :redface:

Or it might be like our timetables where we've got 4 hours of programming labs on a day and it's actually 2 groups with 2 hours :dontknow:

Either way, your week sounds like it's gonna get better after Tuesday each week :yep:

Are there not horizons modules at other times? :console:

Reply 64

Mr Wednesday

Original post by Sinnoh

Pre-uni Machinations #2

just use Microsoft Excel you fools

And this is why we dont let the new UGs write course specs, if you think Excel is the right tool for scientific data plotting you have SO SO MUCH to learn :smile:

.

Go look at "Origin" for a proper 1 stop scientific grade package, Excel is for accountants. For bonus points, going the Phython MatPlotLib route give you access to the guts of fit and error functions that Excel will try to "protect" you from.

https://www.originlab.com/

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 65

Sinnoh

Original post by Mr Wednesday

And this is why we dont let the new UGs write course specs, if you think Excel is the right tool for scientific data plotting you have SO SO MUCH to learn :smile:

God no, keep me well away from the spec.
Origin looks cool, do students get a license to use it since it's otherwise a paid service?

Original post by Lemur14

At least with 4 hour computing sessions you'll actually get stuff done...we used to have 90 mins and you'd literally just be getting into it when it was time to stop :redface:

Or it might be like our timetables where we've got 4 hours of programming labs on a day and it's actually 2 groups with 2 hours :dontknow:

Either way, your week sounds like it's gonna get better after Tuesday each week :yep:

Are there not horizons modules at other times? :console:

They're there for the first 7 weeks and then that's it, no more afterwards. So they probably are 4 hours - no joke about "high intensity". 28 hours doesn't sound like a lot of time to get gud, though.
Nah unfortunately that's just the designated time for Horizons. But I'll definitely have a lot of time on wednesdays to fill :smile:

Reply 66

Mr Wednesday

Original post by Sinnoh

Origin looks cool, do students get a license to use it since it's otherwise a paid service?

They're there for the first 7 weeks and then that's it, no more afterwards. So they probably are 4 hours - no joke about "high intensity". 28 hours doesn't sound like a lot of time to get gud, though.

Origin is on of those useful bits of software that College has a site licence for, you will find it on most of the UG lab and general use PCs in the Physics dept. As a student (with an ac.uk email address) you will also find that lots of companies will give you free versions of pretty heavy duty software.

Those 4 hour sessions are indeed fairly intense and the expectation is that most students will need to do some work outside lab to complete the full worksheet, particularly if you want to do all the fun extensions / optional "stretch" problems. I ran through them "blind" myself as a combined training excercise / bug hunt a while back, some of the deeper problems (recursion and how to balance code "elegance" versus readability while not breaking the stack in non-compiled code like Python) were quite challenging, even for a semi-pro :smile:

.

The aim here is several fold, (1) introduce complete beginners to programming and numerical problem solving and get everyone up to a base level, (2) develop an appropriate mind set to creating, structuring, documenting and most importantly, testing programme functionality, (3) appreciate some of the limiting aspects of numerical physics (rounding errors and convergence etc _will_ bite you at some point) and (4) most importantly, start you building a useful numerical toolkit that you will then use in many of the labs / numerical problems from some lecture courses in later years. For bonus points (5) courses like this expect students to get stuck and have to ask for help, or justify what they have done to a demonstrator. Thats in part designed to take you out of your comfort zone and rapidly get you used to the idea that asking questions is ok (no, you dont lose marks for that) and highlight that the level of challenge, and the ability of everyone else in the room has gone up rather markedly compared to school.

Enjoy :smile:

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 67

Lemur14

Volunteer Section Leader

Original post by Sinnoh

I think ours are the first 10 weeks so you still get more overall :tongue:

It's not a lot tbh, but hopefully you'll have the basics after that. I know from experience I certainly won't have much more, it takes me forever to get good at a language and about 3 seconds to lose it!
Ahh shame :frown:

Lucky you! My timetable is fairly much spread across the whole week and that's without tutorials in there yet :eek:

Reply 68

Sinnoh

Final prep + Move-in
Well. I have left home, kind of.
Preceding this were two trips to Asda for more pans, knives, bedding, general cooking resources etc. Actually moving in was a bit of a mess - the halls are right by a main road so there's no quick parking, there was a disgusting queue for the underground car park so we had to stop at the Carphone Warehouse car park. That's after a ten-minute journey from home to the halls. In fact they're so close, that my nearest big supermarket hasn't actually changed. Maybe I'll bump in to my dad there lol.
Anyway everything was brought up fine, except for my shaver and some toiletries which have unfortunately disappeared through a hole in spacetime. Oh and trying to stretch a single-size bedsheet over what turned out to be a small double is pretty difficult, it's stretched like a drum. Actually shook hands with my dad when all was unloaded which made me feel a bit melancholy for a little while afterwards.
They also gave us this stupid little goodie box containing...

Spoiler

Meeting people in the common room was a load of fun though. Met with some friends I already knew, met with some people I didn't. Highlights were a 12-player game of Uno. Recommend you play with the 0s and 7s rule for extra carnage.
Then we all had to go to the college campus in South Kensington for some introductory lecture about hall safety and whatever - it was also my first taste of my inevitable daily commute.

Then back to the common room for the usual first-night-of-freshers' stuff. The original plan to go to the pub was interrupted by the intro lecture and by the fact that I'm in five group chats and I've muted all of them. Did some more cards, and pool, and table tennis, and drinking. Went back to my room after. At some point there was a party in the kitchen consisting of people who aren't in our flat. Pretty good first night anyway.

Today I went back to my dad's to look for my shaver, didn't find it, had a fry-up then we went for a pub lunch. That's student living right there.

Hall review:
Ignoring the location, Woodward is the best Imperial hall. It's the cheapest, all the rooms are en-suite, it's the most modern and it's pretty communal too.
However don't swoon at the photos of the kitchens with a view - only one block has the panoramic kitchens, and it's already surrounded by other high-rises so unless you're on the high-up floors, your view is that of buildings.

The view from my room isn't great either

Also, the kitchens could be a bit better-equipped. One oven per flat probably won't be enough.
Also the showers suck. Poor water pressure, inconsistent temperature and the head is mounted to the wall and can barely be adjusted.
Leaky toilet cistern, but I'm not paying the bills.

Right well I'll see you all when that welcome week thing is done.

Quotes/Tags

(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 69

gcsemusicsucks

Sorry moving in was a mess and about the showers :console:

At least you're all moved in now and you had a good first night! That goodie box though :rofl:

Reply 70

niamhdoesmaths

sounds like a pretty good start! I had one of those boxes last year too lol, except they threw some packet mash and a pot noodle/pot pasta in ours too :lol:

hope you have a good week! :woo:

Reply 71

absolutelysprout

ooh a goodie box :awesome:

the view doesn't seem too bad, though i've low standards :teehee:

glad to hear you're settling in okay!

Reply 72

flaurie

Volunteer Team

Good to hear that your move into halls was okay :biggrin:

Reply 73

Sinnoh

Original post by gcsemusicsucks

Sorry moving in was a mess and about the showers :console:

At least you're all moved in now and you had a good first night! That goodie box though :rofl:

Makes you wonder what their image of a student is... can't cook, perpetually exhausted but still up for nando's?

Original post by Protostar

sounds like a pretty good start! I had one of those boxes last year too lol, except they threw some packet mash and a pot noodle/pot pasta in ours too :lol:

hope you have a good week! :woo:

Okay then I think I'm lucky because instant mashed potato is vile
you too!

Original post by entertainmyfaith

ooh a goodie box :awesome:

the view doesn't seem too bad, though i've low standards :teehee:

glad to hear you're settling in okay!

Hmmm at least it's not overlooking the graveyard :redface:

thanks!

Original post by laurawatt

Good to hear that your move into halls was okay :biggrin:

thank ye

Reply 74

nyxnko_

Glad you're settling in well :redface:

That goodie box doesn't really seem much like a goodie box though :giggle:

Reply 75

Mr Wednesday

Original post by nyxnko_

That goodie box doesn't really seem much like a goodie box though :giggle:

Perhaps they are all different and you need to meet enough other people with other versions that you can put together a decent dinner. Then again, having bandaged up multiple freshers who sliced themseves open on tins of beans while "cooking" for the 1st time, perhaps that pot noodle is there to minimise bloodshed in the 1st couple of days :smile:

Reply 76

Sinnoh