Socials
A wide range of socials will take place this year to give you a chance to get away from your studies and relax with your fellow physicists. We will be organising events which have been successful in the past such as laser quest, paintball, booze cruise and bar crawls but we also plan to introduce some new socials, for example a games night which we involve playing video and board games in the physics building with lots of free refreshments!
When you become a member of PhysSoc, you will receive a PhysSoc membership card which will give you discounts on drinks and entry at Market Bar and Bar BZR in Nottingham, discounts at some of the top student nights during the week such as Isis on Mondays and The Forum on Thursdays, and reduced taxi fares with Trent Cars taxi firm.
Trips
PhysSoc will give you the opportunity to visit some of the most interesting physics projects and facilities around the world. We will be running two main trips this year: a 3-day trip to CERN in Geneva at Christmas and a 3-day trip to the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) near Amsterdam at Easter.
The CERN trip will run from the 19th to 22nd December with one day spent visiting one of the most talked about places in the world of physics and another day looking around one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. After being voted Best University Trip by the Students Union in 2009, it’s definitely a trip not to miss out on! And, for the first time ever, PhysSoc are going on a 3-day trip to Amsterdam to visit ESTEC, part of the European Space Agency (ESA), in April 2012. We will be providing more information on both trips in October so watch out for any updates to make sure you don’t miss out!
PhysSoc will also be running a number of day trips throughout the year. The first trip will be to the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, which is home to the UK's national radio astronomy facility and the world-famous Lovell Telescope. We are hoping to do a joint trip with the University of Manchester who have researchers that work out the facility that will give us an exclusive tour. We are hoping to run this trip towards the end of November so we should have more information to give to you about the trip in October.
Sport
Sport has been one of the society’s greatest successes in recent years and we hope this year won’t be any different. We will be running football and badminton again as they have proved to be hugely popular among our members in the past two years, but we will also be participating in netball and tennis for the first time this year in order to get more members involved in sport. If none of those sports take your fancy, feel free to suggest to the committee any sports you’d like to see the society do and we will try and generate enough interest in order to start up a team. Playing sport for PhysSoc not only makes sure you get some exercise but it also a great way to make friends from other years which is very useful if you’re struggling with some work and need to ask someone who has been there and done it.
Astronomy
If you have always been a keen star gazer or you would like to learn more about astronomy then PhysSoc is there to help. We will be organising a number of events throughout the year where we will be observing astronomical events with the naked eye or with the School of Physics telescope. We will be providing free training sessions on how to use the telescope and details of these training sessions will be available later this year.
Masterclasses
A number of lecturers from the School of Physics and outside speakers will be giving a variety of talks throughout the year on a wide range of physics topics and how they became involved in the work they do. Over the past year we have enjoyed lectures on nanotechnology, working in academia and ultra-cold atoms. As an added bonus, we always provide free beer and donuts after each lecture.
Visit our website and our Facebook page to find out more about PhysSoc.