Projects are offered every year as Undergraduate Special Projects, Honours Projects for 4th year Physics students and as Vacation Projects over the summer holidays. Details are available on the noticeboard section of this site.

The optical bench used in a summer vacation project on Quantum Optics - a new area of research in Applied.

 

> Teaching

The teaching program, reflecting the mission and research activities, is focused on the areas of:

• Materials Physics - the physics of condensed matter & the physics of diffraction.
• Plasma Physics - fundamentals of plasma processes.
• Quantum Physics - the application of quantum mechanics in materials physics.
• Renewable Energy and Environmental Physics - applications of solar energy, along with energy and greenhouse gas analysis.

Future course development in the biological applications of physics is planned.

The Department also contributes to the teaching effort in the Australian Key Centre for Microscopy & Microanalysis.

> Course descriptions

Energy - Sources, Uses and Alternatives.

This course is taught in the February Semester as part of the postgraduate courses in Applied Science (Environmental Science - ENVI 5707) and as an elective course in third year of the Bachelor of Environmental Science degree programme (ENVI 3001). See the Environmental Science website for further details.

The course aims to give future policy makers and general environmental scientists an overview of the important environmental issues associated with energy use in Australia. Major topics include discussion of the various energy sources and their fundamental physical process, global energy resources, the economics associated with energy production, the politics and culture that surrounds energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric physics, energy and buildings, transportation, and alternatives sources such as solar thermal, wind, biomass and photovoltaic energy. This unit of study includes several field trips to energy utilities and industry groups associated with current and alternate energy sources and generation.