Teaching and Supervising

This is my page for supervisees and teaching resources.

Electronics

This is a set of notes for an extended practical (an afternoon or so) of doing actual practical electronics. It is intended for IA Cambridge Natural Scientists, for whom the Physics course includes a lot of theory, but very little "actually doing it".

Download: pdf.

Computing

This is a set of notes for an extended practical (an afternoon or so) of computer programming, under Linux. It is intended for IA Cambridge Natural Scientists (and others) for whom an introduction to computing is needed. The aim is to provided a jumping-off-point rather than a complete course.

Download: pdf.

Supervising

My advice to others beginning to supervise, can be summed up in 3 concepts: Chocolate Cake, Experiments, and Digressions:

• Chocolate Cake: I have found that serving chocolate fudge cake (or pecan pie) is an excellent way to enhance supervisions. It isn't just delicious - but the sugar is useful to student and supervisor alike. I hope that I have managed to start some sort of Trinity/Magdalene tradition here! We also need to provide practice with the vector cross-product, i.e. the right-hand corkscrew rule :-)
• Experiments: there are many small hands-on demonstrations which can be done in supervisions. These can really help to gain a physical intuition. Childrens' toys are surprisingly useful (Borders books have a good collection): E.g. slinky (waves, impedances); gyroscope (precession); silly putty (brittle fracture, when hit with a hammer), pocket interferometer (small pinhole(s) held next to eye + green LED torch for diffraction); electric field + candle flame; microwave + grape-halves (plasma), stepper-motor (short-circuit - Lenz's law)...
• Demonstrations: there are a lot of helpful demonstrations and animations on the web. Some of the dangerous experiments are best not attempted, but ought to be seen. For example: phase/group velocities, Tesla coils, Microwave experiments, and more. (For amusement, see Brainiac.)
• Digressions: if at all possible, try to find time to go off-topic, whether to bring in other interesting references, and especially to answer questions raised by supervisees which are not directly relevant to the material. This is especially the case when students have handed in complete (and correct) solutions to the examples questions! The supervisor's key role is not, as I see it, merely to mark examples papers, but to encourage and stimulate interest in the subject. Physics is about curiosity, and it is our most important task not to extinguish it!