Imperial Strikes Back: 2nd Year Physics GYG

About me
Hi I'm Sinnoh. A lot of people have made GYGs in quite a short time so let's not be too late to the party. I'm about to go into my second of hopefully four years of doing physics at Imperial College. Outside of physics I'm pretty fond of classical music, history, guitar, and Pokémon. I was somewhat active in the history society and quiz society last year so I'll be rejoining them for sure.

I previously did blogs for year 13 (here) and first year (here). I don't know what to expect from this year so I can hardly say what you can expect from this blog. Last year's was more aimed at prospective physics students, this year maybe I'll actually need the motivation. So I won't go into as much detail about the stuff I'm learning - or I'll put in a different section about it in my updates if people really care.

The academic stuff
For once I am actually intending to grow my grades. Most of the main assessments last year were done after the coronavirus hit, so they were done at home. I didn't revise well at all, and had they not been open-book I'd have been really screwed.

Results from first year

Actually not as bad as I was expecting! Still, I wouldn't want that to be my final grade, and as you can see I was very close to resitting one of the modules. Normally first year would've counted for 7.5% of my final grade, but there is a no-detriment policy in place: if my result for first year is lower than my average for the next three years, it won't count.

So at the very least, I want to get a better overall grade. I need to score at least 60% overall this year to progress on to the MSci course. Second year is normally worth 20% of the whole degree so I have much less room for messing up, too.

2nd Year Modules

I have heard many times that the 2nd year of physics at Imperial is completely bonkers, what with more exams and more frequent lab write-ups and an all-round infamous reputation. With the new course structure it might not be so bad, but I really don't expect to have those great swathes of free time I had last year.

Other goals for the year/things I want to do:

•

Not make a mess of things in my role on a society

•

Try out for University Challenge again (3 attempts left)

•

Suck less at Python

•

Develop some sort of daily routine for studying at home

•

Make use of office hours (even if done via Microsoft Teams!)

•

Problem sheets!!

If you want to follow this blog, either put it on watched or request to be tagged. I'll spam all of last year's tagged peoples with yet another notification, but there's no need to feel obliged or anything.

Index of updates

expand

last year's

(edited 3 years ago)

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Reply 40

I AM GROOT 1

It's going to be such a weird year :erm:

PRSOM

Reply 41

Sinnoh

Micro-update.

My brief burst of productivity (which was hardly a burst in the first place, I did about 3 problem sheets) has been gone for about at least a week now :indiff:

Mental health took a bit of a dip but I think things are improving.
My timetable has been released, although it's only going to be of any use for the live (but still remote) events, since the normal lectures are timetabled in the evening. So maybe that's just when they release the lectures online. I'll have to come up with a proper timetable, then.
They haven't yet updated the page with the module specifications so I'm still not quite sure what the content is, but once they do that I'll make a post going through them.

Reply 42

barror1

Please can I have a tag?
And yeah, this term is going to be suuuuper uncertain. I hope that you're doing ok, my DMs are always open if you want to complain about second year together :console:

Reply 43

Sinnoh

Original post by barror1

Please can I have a tag?
And yeah, this term is going to be suuuuper uncertain. I hope that you're doing ok, my DMs are always open if you want to complain about second year together :console:

Bien sur, tu serais tagged

I am looking forward to at least having something to do that I'm forced to do. The past few months have been...I think 'empty' best describes it.

Reply 44

barror1

Original post by Sinnoh

Bien sur, tu serais tagged

I am looking forward to at least having something to do that I'm forced to do. The past few months have been...I think 'empty' best describes it.

Yeah I get that, extracurricular stuff has basically kept me going :yes:

Hopefully being on campus once a week and doing SU/society stuff will be enough to keep a routine this term :dontknow:

Reply 45

Sinnoh

And so it begins... again.

I guess term has started. My Microsoft Teams notifications are definitely going off a lot more than they used to, my Blackboard page has updated and there are even a few new lectures to watch. Do I feel all that ready for new topics and more work? Not really. Am I glad to see the back of the most uneventful summer I've ever had and have something to do again? **** yes.

The only on-site activities for my course this term are the lab sessions, but they don't start until November for me since I've got computing as a 'lab' first. I'm still planning on coming in to the campus maybe once a week or more often, because a) I've actually missed it and b) I'm more likely to do work there. I went in the previous week, before the term actually started, to see what was open, how it was running, how crowded the trains were and do a little bit of revision. I was going to go in again today, but right before I got there I realised I'd left my college ID card and then when I got back I was charged the maximum fare because TfL thought I'd forgotten to touch out which left a bit of a bad taste so I abandoned that.

I have a timetable, but it's not useful for lectures since they're all pre-recorded and uploaded at the start of each week. There are just occasional live sessions, like the computing labs, remote office hours and some Q&As with the lecturers as a substitute for queuing up at the end of the lecture at the front of the hall.

Ok for anyone interested, here's some details about the modules. They finally uploaded the module specifications on the website so I at least know roughly what the new modules consist of.

Advanced Practical Physics
This is the module for all the computing and labs we do this year. There have been a few short lectures uploaded as preparation for the computing sessions. We're going a bit deeper into object-oriented programming, being introduced to using classes in Python, it feels a lot more computer science-esque than last year.

Quantum Physics
Starts with the introductory quantum physics module that used to be a 1st year course so should be ok. First few lectures are supposedly focus mainly on concepts, although I've only watched one so far. This is the biggest module of the year: 16 lectures on introduction to quantum physics, 25 on quantum mechanics and then 16 on atomic physics. Plus an extra couple for this article thing later on, I assume. Just from first impressions it's looking interesting, but I expect things to get 'drier' and more abstract when we move on to QM.

Differential Equations and Electromagnetism
Not much info about the structure of this module yet :iiam:

but the content looks like it'll get quite tricky quite quickly. Some of the stuff on DEs will be familiar from further maths A-level (I hope) but there's a lot besides. And neither electrostatics nor magnetism were my strong suit in first year.

Thermal Physics and Structure of Matter
I guess these are grouped together because they're the most chemistry-y of the lot. Structure of matter doesn't look that bad, I had a glance at a past paper of it, but thermodynamics and statistical physics could be painful.

Horizons - Revolutions and the Making of the Modern World
We've already been given an introductory video and a short task to come up with our own definition of revolutions and to basically do a bit of research so we have something to talk about when the class actually happens. Not at all related, but our teacher for this has written a surprisingly interesting article on the use of curses in Ireland. It's assessed from two 2000-word essays, submitted at the end of the autumn and spring terms. I'm a bit disappointed that we have to pick from a (fairly narrow) list of essay questions and we can't really re-use topics, because I'd demolish the Russian Revolution as a topic, but I guess we're meant to have a broad overview :redface:

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(edited 4 years ago)

Reply 46

niamhdoesmaths

those modules sound juicy :drool:

hope you manage to get into the swing of things quickly and can build up a bit of a routine despite everything being posted in advance :smile:

Reply 47

Sinnoh

Original post by niamhdoesmaths

those modules sound juicy :drool:

hope you manage to get into the swing of things quickly and can build up a bit of a routine despite everything being posted in advance :smile:

indeed they do

and yeah I've worked out that I just need to watch 2-3 lectures a day to keep up with the content itself so that's alright. On 1.5x speed it hardly takes any time :ahee:

Reply 48

Sinnoh

And just like that, that's 2 weeks of uni down. There's quite a difference between the first two weeks of 1st year and the first two weeks of 2nd year, and it's not just the fact that I've only been into campus three times since the start of term.

The college campus is a lot quieter than it was in the Before-Time; there are no human traffic jams on the walkway, the queues for the hot food outlets can be measured in feet instead of miles, Queen's Lawn hasn't been churned up into a mudbath, the sentence "I found a seat in the library at lunchtime" isn't met with guffaws of disbelief. It's actually quite a nice place to be in those respects. My biggest complaint about the place really is that they got rid of all the nice uni merchandise I wanted to buy (seriously what did they do with all those scarves? and that £285 fountain pen?).

Despite all that, the social experience has been pretty lacking. I haven't yet met friends from first year in person, and plans to meet up next week may be thwarted because of the imminent increase in the coronavirus alert level for London. So that sucks, especially since very few of my school friends are in London atm. It's now about 2 weeks since I've met up with friends in person...

Last week (5th to 9th of October)
So obviously, less busy than fresher's week was last year, really just making my way through the new lectures for each topic. I went into campus on the Wednesday (the day after the last update), then realised that it coincided with the PhySoc 'mums and dads' introduction event on MS Teams, so good thing I had my laptop and earphones with me. That was fun, I had my first katsu curry in about 7 months - I then managed to spill some dregs of the sauce on to my laptop, which was not so nice.
Only 'live' things I attended that week were the computing session and the Research Frontiers event which was quite interesting, it was about the Cassini mission to Saturn, the detections it made and about the satellite itself.

This week
Started off with the Horizons seminar where we were just looking at the theory and ideas of revolutions, including discussing some famous quotes and debating what 'counted' as a revolution. Because we had the choice of attending a 9 a.m. class or a 4 p.m. class, the 9 a.m. class had far fewer people so I'm glad I got up early for it. Next week we'll be looking at the French Revolution; I've borrowed a book from the library for it.

Had the first seminar and first assessed problem sheet of the year; the seminar was on the structure of matter module, looking at the Lennard-Jones potential formula for forces between atoms, and messing about with an online physics simulation that proved quite glitchy when you tried to put in too many particles at once, or ran it too quickly. It was a decent seminar, I think, and it's nice to do a step up in complexity from ideal gases.

Also had the second computing session on Thursday - after some initial frustrations it went quite smoothly. Coding is so satisfying when you get it right first time. I'm not looking forward to the computing projects much, though - it's developing simulations of either ray optics in lenses (gross) or particle collisions in a container (slightly less gross?).

I've finished all the lectures for this week at least, and finished the assessed problem sheet so I guess you could say I'm a right productivity machine... nah well at least I'm doing a lot better with online learning than I was back in the summer.

Brief review of the modules so far:
Quantum Physics
We've just about gotten on to the actual quantum physics part after a few introductory lectures about optics and atomic structure; most recent lecture was on the photoelectric effect and Compton scattering. It's quite interesting so far and not that difficult, but there's a lot of information and I mustn't get complacent.

Differential Equations & Electromagnetism
Only two 'full' lectures so far (they're split into many parts), nothing too new apart from some nice properties about solutions to the equations. Electromagnetism doesn't come along for a while. Have done a bit extra practice on this besides the problem sheet - I want to make sure it's not a problem later.

Thermal Physics & Structure of Matter
So far not as interesting as I might have expected, with the exception of the most recent lecture which was on viscosity of fluids and pressure. Turns out the old specification used to include fluid flow equations, even the Navier-Stokes equation used to be assessed - and this was a 1st year module before! So yeah I'm glad they've updated the course because that is a bit much.

Afterword
Writing up an update takes a surprising amount of time and that could become a scarce resource, so I'm thinking I might reduce the frequency of 'formal' updates where I notify everyone subscribed and have frequent posts just to write down what I've done and need to do - I would want to see if this blog can be helpful to my degree.
That's all for now!

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Reply 49

Toastiekid

quiet london sounds very strange! are there actually any students who can afford a £285 fountain pen? :gasp:

sorry to hear the social stuff is a bit rubbish at the moment :frown:

i suspect the online zoom quizzes and all that are going to make a comeback over the next few weeks :redface:

your modules sound really interesting! i did a research project thing in year 12 in which we looked at viscosity and navier stokes and the stuff in it was very cool (took a while to get our heads around though!)
have a lovely week :wink:

Reply 50

Sinnoh

Original post by Toastiekid

quiet london sounds very strange! are there actually any students who can afford a £285 fountain pen? :gasp:

sorry to hear the social stuff is a bit rubbish at the moment :frown:

i suspect the online zoom quizzes and all that are going to make a comeback over the next few weeks :redface:

I had enough maintenance loan left over after the first term to buy that pen, but I'm sure I'd lose it at some point.
ahh yeah I remember you mentioning that project! Though I'd imagine there's a lot of skirting around the problem, solving Navier-Stokes is a Millennium Prize problem after all.

thanks and you too!

Reply 51

Sinnoh

Saturday was busy as hell, had a quiz tournament via Zoom that lasted about 7 hours (!!!) not including lunch. Difficulty on the whole was a bit easier than previous ones I've done, but there were far too many literature questions for my liking. I think we won 3 out of 8 games?
I wasn't finished after that though, had another society event in the evening, thankfully it lasted about an hour but wow I felt tired at 9:30 pm and that is very unusual.

I don't remember doing anything on Sunday though apart from visiting my mum's.

Should hopefully be meeting up with friends tonight and tomorrow, there's also the UC tryouts tomorrow :awesome:

whilst I think I've improved since last year, I'm not confident about getting to the second round; I had some unbelievable luck with my guesses last year.

I also think I completely unintentionally missed one of the computing sessions last week. I didn't know we had two per week... whoops. So I've got that in just over an hour. But I'm done with the worksheet anyway so we should be moving on to the actual projects now. Not looking forward to that so much.

Reply 52

Toastiekid

Original post by Sinnoh

the pain of losing the pen would be too much!
yes, unfortunately we didn't solve it :biggrin:

there were jokes about solving it but we pretty much just learnt how to simplify it by making different assumptions and what all the different symbols meant (and how it linked to the lymphatic system)
no worries :wink:

Reply 53

flaurie

Volunteer Team

Katsu curry :woo:

Oooh well done for the quiz and gl for the UC tryouts, hoping for some lucky guesses! :yep:

Reply 54

Sinnoh

Original post by laurawatt

Katsu curry :woo:

Oooh well done for the quiz and gl for the UC tryouts, hoping for some lucky guesses! :yep:

Thanks! and yeah there were a couple lucky guesses but on the slim chance that other people at uni see this thread I can't talk about them now :ninja:

Reply 55

Sinnoh

Okay halfway through the week.
The computing project has kind of sucked as anticipated. I've opted for the thermodynamics simulation with the balls colliding in a container. I have about 2 weeks to complete it. So far I've made a class in Python and painstakingly copied in some (cited) equations and not much else. Also did the second online test for computing but the highest mark I could get was 6/8. Got another session for computing tomorrow but I just don't find it enjoyable at all at the moment.

Having noticed some further flaws with my APS I've resubmitted it so should be good now.

Lectures not yet watched:
Quantum Physics 8, Differential Equations 3, Structure of Matter 5, 6 & 7. 7 hasn't been released yet, though.

Problem sheets to do:
Quantum Physics 2, Differential Equations 2, plus differential equations APS.

Other stuff...

Met up with people yesterday, then followed by the first round of the UC try-outs. I made a very embarrassing stupid mistake on the first question, but I had a nice run of correct answers later on. You could write an answer in twice for double points, but if wrong you lose a point. I don't think I had any negs aside from the first question. I think I did similarly to last year when I got into the second round, but I really shouldn't take that as a given and there are other people I know of who ought to do better.

Oh and the try-outs were held in the physics lecture theatre which was a very nice hit of nostalgia for last year.