Teaching

The Senior Physics Challenge is an initiative to develop skills and interest in school students in the great intellectual challenges that higher Physics presents when investigating the natural world. A summer school brings together in Cambridge some of the most able 64 students in the UK at the end of their AS (penultimate) school year. See the SPC web site . The directors of the SPC are now Drs Anson Cheung and Lisa Jardine-Wright. The summer school is very difficult for pupils of this age - Feynman problems in mechanics, first year university quantum mechanics, lab classes and estimation classes are pursued during long days. Other fun activities (e.g. punting) also figure. Mathematical and experimental skills are developed. Most students are very happy to be so seriously extended.
The Ogden Trust and the participating Cambridge Colleges are major supporters of the SPC, as is St Paul's School that donates the services of an outstanding teacher.

My Corpus website and the Corpus Physics website have more teaching information.

Dr. Anson Cheung and I have written a quantum mechanics primer , which is most definitely not a text book, but more a practical introduction. Chapters 1–3 are used in Cambridge for the SPC. Chapters 2–5 would also serve university quantum mechanics courses, for instance, until midway through the second year in Cambridge from where we have drawn many problems. Maths and physics skills are revised in chapter 1. Then chapters 2 and 3 introduce the quantum world for real, not by analogies and taking on trust, but by solving the problems that suffuse the text. The first three chapters guide the transition from school to university, and are a practical aid for the fluency and understanding that are tested in admissions to higher physics, maths and engineering.

The primer is published by the Periphyseos Press and is available at cost price (£1) for group orders of about 20 copies (plus P&P); see the Primer's website.