Well, this is a bit fancy.
I'm somewhere a bit different today. My uni has a
recording studio where they've recently set up. That's free for students to use and so I thought I'd come in and try it out
It's probably a bit too serious for the kind of casual video
I filmed today, but I think it might be good in the future. I'm filming sort of
Educational or more scientific videos, so let me know if you have any suggestions for the things I could film in here.
One thing I didn't expect to learn when I went to uni was computer science.
At that time I was only interested in
theoretical physics and astronomy
but in my first year I was enrolled in a computer science course because it was recommended for the astronomy major.
I sort of showed up having no idea what to expect.
I kind of thought we'd be doing learning about hardware on what a RAM is how things actually work?
But I was sort of surprised with what we actually did learn which was a lot of variables and types
and how do you make functions and how do you tell a computer
how to do something for you? I kind of had a love-hate relationship with this course. I liked it because
unlike all the other courses, I was really learning something new.
Especially the first year physics courses. It almost felt like we were
rehashing basic ideas that we learned in physics at school. So we were doing mechanics or
electricity and magnetism or a little bit of quantum and whilst they were harder than school
It was sort of still the same ideas. This computer science though that I was introduced to
I'd really never learnt it before. But actually there were also reasons I didn't enjoy this course.
In comparison to my other courses it was the only one where I really felt like I was behind all of my peers.
Instead of aiming for the top of the class like I was trying doing my other courses
I felt like I was struggling to keep up and I always had to ask for help
and I sort of felt a bit uncomfortable with that at first.
When some of my friends were discussing coding projects they had done previously in various languages
I was still thinking oh, can you tell me again what is a function? But I got over that it sort of got over myself
And I did enjoy the course.
So much that eventually I took some more computer science courses and learnt things like algorithms or data structures
and how to write a more effective code, and I'm really glad I took some of those further courses.
So the first research project I ended up doing in my degree
I was working at an observatory in Sydney, and I was essentially
processing images of galaxies
to design a CubeSat
satellite and also a telescope.
I found out that there wasn't really much
Astronomy knowledge needed to do this research project. It was kind of an exercise in coding
my supervisor for this project actually had done his degree in computer science and then
specialized in astronomy later on and I think that's kind of a good way to do it actually. I think someone in
astronomy with no computer science knowledge
would actually really struggled because
you'd have to teach yourself coding as you go and whilst you can probably do that it might not be as efficient
as if you knew some more of that background behind it.
As for physics it really depends on the kinds of things you want to specialize in.
Theoretical projects that involve a lot of modeling or coding simulations
I think coding is of course going to be a very important skill there and also for experimental work. If you're often
handling really large datasets you have to know to manipulate and keep track of that data often through coding.
It is possible to find projects within physics that don't use a lot of coding if
you really want to stay away from it and personally my project now doesn't actually use much of that.
But it is really useful skill to have especially if you want to automate tasks on a
computer and and make things easier for yourself. I also think that a knowledge of coding or computer science
is going to help you not just in research and with research projects but going out into
industry and your employability later on. A lot of physicists end up working and storing and manipulating data
in roles such as a software engineer
working for big companies.
So I think no matter what you want to do. It would be a really good skill to
supplement all of your physics or your maths or astronomy course work.
The courses I did were taught in the language Python, and that's what I've used
For all the research projects. I've done as well, but there are lots of other languages that are applicable to
Science and you might also encounter some other sort of coding software along the way.
For example R for statistics
MATLAB for managing data and doing things with linear algebra and matrices and
Also, Mathematica, which is really good for solving equations
You probably encounter some of these throughout your course work
And therefore solving the more everyday problems learning how to use these tools is more about learning
Syntax and you can sort of get away with not knowing some of the more theoretical computer science aspects
But it certainly it doesn't hurt. If you're not yet at uni
I really recommend you try and learn some basic coding skills. There's lots of really awesome
Programs that run now whether it's in schools or outside schools where you can learn the basics of programming
So that maybe when you get to uni you don't feel as bewildered as I first did. I thought sort of think
It's a skill you can pick up quite early on as well. It doesn't require a lot of
background knowledge to get started.
You don't need to have really good math skills or anything. You can sort of learn the language from quite a young age
I think. And if you are already at uni maybe majoring in physics
I would say to try and take as many computer science courses as you can
alongside your studies. I think they'll really help you
Especially if you don't already have sort of a self-taught prior knowledge in the field.
Keep an open mind as well.
If you take maybe a couple of extra computer science courses along the way
You might find you enjoy it more than what you initially intended to major and that might be your new thing.