2016 Year Book

KICKSTART PHYS
On the 17 th of August all Year 12 Physics students
participated in the excursion to the Kickstart Physics
Workshop. On that day, they had an early start,
meeting at Blacktown Station, travelling to Redfern
station and then walking to The University of Sydney
as many hundreds and thousands of university
students do.
Upon arrival they had a chance to browse among
some archived physics apparatus displayed in the
Physics Department at The University of Sydney.
Then they were given a tour, by the host of the
Kickstart Program, of the newly opened Nanoscience
Laboratory (one of the very few research facilities of
this kind in the world.) This was a great opportunity
for our students, as it enabled the students to
see how scientists are pushing the boundaries
of Physics by trying to discover and harness new
science at nanoscale level, in an absolutely dust
free environment. Many students came to realise,
the importance of the utilisation of creativity and
imagination within physics for future discoveries and
technologies, which have only just begun to scratch
the surface.
After visiting the Nanoscience Laboratory and other
research facilities within the Physics Department,
students spent several hours doing the workshop
where they rotated through different experiments
related to the topic they have studied, “From Ideas
to Implementation”. This workshop took place in
the second year physics laboratory. Each rotation
consisted of a demonstration that was conducted
by a dynamic demonstrator and covered highlights
of the syllabus in depth. The students gathered and
analysed first hand data to calculate very important
constants in physics such as speed of light, charge
to mass ratio of electron, Planck’s constant etc.
Overall, this excursion helped our students in two
ways, one, to succeed in the upcoming HSC Physics
Examination and two; to think about possible
pathways for their tertiary education.
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