Sixth Former Designs Course for Aspiring Physicists and Engineers

Dason T(U6), inspired by his Gold award in the British Physics Olympiad Computational Challenge last year, has designed a course for students to learn how to use MATLAB.

MATLAB is a programming and computation platform often used in university courses involving Physics, Computer Science and Engineering.

Thirteen students from Fifth Form and Lower Sixth eagerly attended the first session. Some students are completing projects as part of their Physics AP and hope to use what they learn in the completion of their projects. The first tasks students completed were to create a programme to convert degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit as well as creating a programme to plot graphs of motion of particles.

Dason shared some detail of what is required for the Computational Challenge and showed some of his work where he created programmes to model short and long-sightedness complete with sliding scales for a lens.

Cayden C In Lower Sixth said of the course:

“Dason was very helpful in the session through his introduction presentation and his "How to use MATLAB" guide. I can feel his passion to help others achieve the same result as he has. Through MATLAB and programming in general, I want to explore different applications of programming and understand how programming is used for a variety of career paths. “

The course will continue each week with students developing more complex skills and programmes as they move through the course.

Dason spoke of the course:

“The first session was well-attended, and it has been really encouraging to see strong interest from students keen to engage with the subject beyond the curriculum.

The immediate aim is to support students preparing for the BPhO Computational Challenge, but the wider objective is to develop problem-solving skills and independent thinking that extend beyond coding, so that they leave confident in using computation to explore scientific ideas.”

Mrs Amy Smiter, Head of Physics