Physics BSc (Hons) / MPhys (Hons)

Professor Daniel Thomas:

What really fascinates me most about university education is that right at the interface between research and teaching, newly created knowledge and skills are passed on directly to you, to the next generation.

The University of Portsmouth gives us the right equipment and the right facilities to our physics students and to our physics staff to do exactly that.

Our physics students get to experience the laws of nature and physical concept first hand, to the lab modules in the first and second years. Cherie Morrison, our senior technician, will show you now a little bit of the experiments you are going to be doing in the first and the second year of your studies.

Cherie Morrison (Senior Technician):

This is the main physics room where we have our first and second year experiments. Behind me you can see the photoelectric effect, electron diffraction, hall effect.

We also have an experiment using LabView that will give you the skills that employers are looking for.

Here's the AFM that stands for atomic force microscopy. Here we can look at the topography of the surface. So that's what the surface looks like and how it has all these bumps and ridges but really, these features are only a few nanometres tall. You can see an image of my hair. My hair is only roughly 100 microns thick and this image is only 10 microns across. You can see all the scales, all the bumps and all the shapes on my hair.

Professor Daniel Thomas:

In our labs we've also got the MBE, which stands for Molecular Beam Epitexi and the plasma spluttering device. They are both high end cutting edge research devices that we use, in fact, for our research but we also use it for our teaching.

What we do with these devices is we are adding very thin films on surfaces and the thickness of this film is less than a nanometre. Think about it, less than a nanometre. It's just the size of an atom. So the device creates a vacuum less than deep space, 10 to the minus 10 million.

Doctor Samantha Penny:

This is our computer lab for our final year students to carry out their project work. So if you come and do an MPhys year with us, so you do the four year integrated master's degree, you get a chance to carry out a final year project. We have this lovely, dedicated computer room for you to do your project work in, so no competing with the other undergrads for your computer space.

In that project, you'll get to carry out all sorts of real research problems that real life astronomers or physicists are working on. So, for example, the kind of projects I'm offering this year, my students will be working with observational data sets from large cutting edge astronomical surveys.

They're going to be searching for supermassive black holes and galaxies. They're going to be working out why galaxies in really, really under dense, really sort of uncrowded regions of the universe, why they look different to galaxies in other parts of the universe as well.

And I'm also having a student who's going to look at how to communicate astronomy to anybody with a visual impairment. So a real range of projects you could get involved with if you come to Portsmouth. So we look forward to welcoming you to the University of Portsmouth and I think you'll really enjoy your time here studying with us.

Professor Daniel Thomas:

The offices of our physics staff are located in the Dennis Sciama building right next to the labs. The Dennis Sciama Building also hosts the well renowned Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation that is well known for its world leading research in astrophysics and cosmology. When you study physics with us, you get the opportunity to work on exciting research projects together with our staff from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation in fields like astrophysics and cosmology.

Close to the Dennis Sciama Building and the labs is the Lion Gate Building, where we host the Technology and Learning Centre. That's a space for our physics students to meet, to learn or just to hang out. We also hold daily tutorials run by our mathematics and physics staff for our physics students so that they can ask any questions they may have about maths or physics.

We look forward to welcoming you at the University of Portsmouth to discover the magic of physics with us.

The universe is something that's always interested me.

It's always fascinated me.

I mean, the thing about my job is that I love problem-solving and using theoretical physics to find a practical solution.

The biggest sort of link between space and radar is more the processes to try and condense all the data and see the most out of the data and is obviously another application of all the physics I learnt.

I'm born and bred in Portsmouth, so at first I didn't actually plan on coming to Portsmouth.

I did actually want to go away from home.

I actually did a summer placement during my A Levels.

And when I met all the lecturers at the University and saw how passionate they were about actually teaching physics, I thought that's something that you weren't getting anywhere else.

So I thought, actually, this is where I'm going to get my best education and the most opportunities.

The lecturers were passionate about what they wanted to teach.

It's not just what they studied and what they research, but it was how they wanted to sort of teach the next generation.

The University of Portsmouth was critical to giving me the opportunity to work at BAE through the Industry Advisory Board, and if it wasn't for them inviting me along and introducing me to members of industry, then I wouldn't have had the opportunities I have today.

Working a lot within the outreach, especially with the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, that really sort of, I think, boosted my confidence from being quite an introverted person, not really able to talk to people, to all of a sudden, you have to talk to people, you have to try and teach a little bit of physics to schoolchildren, to parents.

I think that really improved my communication skills.

I think I would describe my time at university as being life-changing.

Compared to what I was before I came to university and how I am now, the way that I developed so much through, you know, not just the degree itself, but all the extracurricular sort of society events, that's really developed me to who I am now.

Samantha Penny: This is part of a second year module called Universe: Planetary System, Stars and Galaxies. We get our maths and physics students together and see the science we're learning actually, in reality. 

Steve Broadbent: We've been in close partnership with the university for over 20 years now, and it offers the students an opportunity to use real equipment, which they don't get from lectures. 

Hannah Copley: It's really great that this is so near to the university that's such a great opportunity for us to take what we learn in lessons and actually practically do it for no extra cost. 

Samantha Penny: Portsmouth is a really built up, dense environment. There's lots of light pollution, but we only have to come a little way out and we've got some of the darkest skies in Hampshire right on our doorstep. 

Steve Broadbent: We've got five domes with various telescopes. The star attraction is a research grade 24-inch reflecting telescope. 

Hannah Copley: We study the universe, planets, stars, galaxies so that's definitely going to help in my end of year exams coming up. 

Ahmed Yahya: It's incredible to have these facilities in Portsmouth. It's an amazing opportunity that I am glad I didn't skip on. 

Samantha Penny: We combine the observatory visit with a visit to the nearby planetarium in Chichester, so the South Downs Planetarium. 

Sarah Brown: Tonight we've been looking at sunspots and all of the emissions from the sun, which has been epic. 

Samantha Penny: Despite being our closest star. I think there's so few people who actually have looked at the sun in detail, combining those lectures with trips to the observatory, seeing these things for themselves, I think really, really helps the students. 

Sarah Brown: I'm very glad I took this module because it's been really interesting. I've learned an awful lot. It's been a great experience. 

Hannah Copley: I think it's given me a big insight into after university the sort of things you can go into. 

Ahmed Yahya: It's amazing to see it with other people that have seen it so many times. The look in their eyes when you see it and start noticing things that they've seen a thousand times really made it something special.