Undergraduate Prospectus 2009

Why study Physics at Bath?

The quality of the teaching and research of the Department of Physics at Bath has been widely and independently recognised. We are a medium-sized department with a friendly atmosphere and a good relationship between staff and students. We have good facilities, expert staff and highly qualified students. We take pride in cultivating physicists who combine a high level of numeracy with the ability to apply their skills and experience in a wide variety of careers. The Department has expanded considerably in recent years. This year our MPhys laboratory is undergoing significant expansion, and our Final Year Project provision is being extended. We also have a new building for our world-leading photonics research group and a new nanoscience laboratory.

We offer considerable flexibility; our students can make their final choices between Physics MPhys or BSc and between study year abroad, placement, or full-time University study during their first or second year, rather than at the outset. The Mathematics and Physics degrees allow you to transfer into single-subject Physics or Mathematics degrees after the first year. Bath Physics is one of the very few departments to provide the option of a placement period within both our BSc and MPhys degrees. Bath is one of the top UK Universities for the level of employment after graduation and the careers that our students take up are generally challenging, interesting and highly-paid. This is due in part to our strong reputation and also to our record of finding excellent placements.

The Department annually allocates about eight Institute of Physics bursaries of around £1000 per year to UK and Irish students.

The placement year

Around 50% of our students choose to go on placement, including many of our top students. The Department has long-standing links with many leading companies and organisations throughout Britain and Europe. Frequent placement hosts in the UK include BAE Systems, MBDA, IBM, National Physical Laboratory, Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, Sharp Laboratories Europe, and the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory. Abroad, placements have included CERN in Geneva, the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, Davos, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart, ESRF in Grenoble, and Siemens in Munich. Students normally receive a salary while on placement; they may be given sponsorship by their employer in their final year, or may receive a job offer from the host company.

Career opportunities

www.bath.ac.uk/careers/destinations/intro.html

www.bath.ac.uk/careers/destinations/2006/physics.pdf

Physicists are in huge demand; careers that recent Bath Physics graduates have entered include: University Research (for opportunities at Bath, see our website at www.bath.ac.uk/physics/pgadmissions/index.html), Research and Development, Design and Production, Medical Physics, Astronomy, Teaching Physics, Patent Law (UK and European), Geophysics, Meteorology, Computing (hardware and software), Administration and Management, Accountancy, Banking, Financial Analysis, and Science Journalism.