As the comic picture suggests, being a physicist is all about being inquisitive. Our job is to foster pupils’ natural curiosity for the way the universe works and to help them discover some of the answers.

In the three years up to the IGCSE exams, pupils will study topics like Electricity, Radioactivity, Motion etc. With the support of our technicians, we put great emphasis on the importance of practical work: this enables our pupils to learn through doing experiments to discover (rather than merely being told) what happens. Our labs are very well equipped with apparatus - both the traditional type and modern data-logging devices. Pupils joining us in the Third Form spend much of their first term learning the skills they need to do practical work effectively, and to use various software packages to record data and to process it.

Our teaching staff are all graduate physicists or engineers with a wide range of experience and complementary expertise. We have Internet access from every laboratory and a suite of MacBook lap-top computers, together with sophisticated data-logging facilities.

We have arranged sixth form visits to scientific establishments such as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, the Diamond Synchrotron at Harwell and the JET fusion project at Culham. Our evening events have included talks on Black Holes, The Standard Model of Particle Physics, The Universe and The Photoelectric Effect. Many of our pupils enter national competitions and have enjoyed considerable success.

Tom Adams, Head of Physics