At Imperial we employ a mix of teaching styles to help you get the most from the course, encouraging deep learning of material from day 1, rather than just relying on last minute exam cramming. Simultaneous to this we help you develop the other skills you will need as a professional in the area, including team working, researching a topic and how to present your findings clearly and accurately to different audiences. As with lectures, you are required to attend all of the seminars and tutorials.

Seminars

Each week as well as lectures you will be required to attend a 2hr seminar – alternating between the different modules being taught. These seminars are based around both individual work and small team exercises. Many will involve a practical aspect, highlighting interesting, often fun parts of the course you may have overlooked. For the seminars, please bring a smart device – e.g. phone, tablet or laptop connected to the wifi (if you forget/don’t have one, please borrow a laptop from the UG office/computing suite). Over the course of the term, several seminars will include exercises that contribute a small amount of marks to your degree.

Academic tutorials

Every second week you will have a 1hr tutorial in a small group (5-6) with a member of staff. The content of the tutorials will be up to you and your peers – before the tutorial a very short (10minute) questionnaire called ‘think about the physics’ will need to be filled out. The tutor will base the tutorial from the answers to these questionnaires, concentrating on helping where the majority of you have had the most difficulties with the course.

Problem sheets

Most weeks each module will give out a problem sheet with a mix of questions from the different lecturers. Two to three times per term these will include assessed questions that are marked for the degree, with answers returned in your academic tutorials.

Professional skills tutorials

As a physicist, you also need to learn other key skills – for instance how to research a topic and write a review article and how to break down a challenging problem into small easily solved parts. These exercises are connected to the modules but taught in special tutorials of ~20 students each. In term 1 there is a group project, with tutorials every second week dedicated to researching a topic linked to the oscillations and waves module. In term 2, each head of a research group in physics will give an overview of the biggest problems in their area and the cutting edge research being performed to address them. The heads of groups will each recommend an easy to access journal paper that you are expected to summarise and put in context. In term 3, the problem solving course teaches dimensionality and helps to develop skills like estimations and fast calculation. At the end of term 3, there will be a test of your problem solving abilities.

The timetables below show a complete year 1, term 1 timetable for each Tutorial Class. Please click on the one for your class. All files are PDF.

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