This is Physics and Astrophysics at Keele

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRXtxhd4nz8 

Study Physics and Astrophysics and you'll explore frontier topics guided by our world-leading researchers, and gain the core practical, academic and employability skills that are highly valued by employers in a broad range of sectors.

In this video our students and staff share their personal experiences of studying at Keele. This video was filmed in January 2024 – experiences and opportunities may vary for future years.

At Keele, you get to really know the lecturers and the lecturers get to really know you, so you feel a bit more connected. But also, for the Physics and Astrophysics course, the lecturers are very passionate at what they do. They’re at the forefront of research, so whenever they're talking about something, you feel their passion coming into their teaching.

Studying Physics and Astrophysics gives you a full understanding of the world and the physical principles, and at the same time, it gives you those analytical skills and those problem-solving skills that then serve you very well in real life. Our degree is accredited by the Institute of Physics, so that means that we teach all the core physics that physicists are meant to know. But at the same time, we have things like computing and mathematics skills embedded in our curriculum. We have always tried to embed things that have to do with skills; presentation skills, the problem-solving skills, cooperative working.

There's a range of different facilities from quite a large computer lab with the specialist software, you know, coding software but also specialist astrophysics software that you’d use in the professional space.

At Keele, it's not just about graduating with a title, you know, it's about analysing, learning how to analyse and communicate what we're doing, and that's a very crucial skill in science.

You will do a large project, which in Physics is open-ended and leading towards new results. Then in Astrophysics, we show you how the new data from space missions such as NASA telescopes, Kepler and TESS, can be used to determine properties of stars, which has never been done before.

We’ve got the observatory, which gives loads of opportunities. The observatory opens to the public and as a student, you're able to go and volunteer and interact with the public, which for me has given me a chance to practice my communication skills as well as actually applying my knowledge and using telescopes and being able to show the public different things.

Keele is not just about sitting in the lectures all day, we can go outside in the forest and the lakes. I really like that because then it creates this learning environment for us to like, explore and excel in the areas of our interests.