Aims

The intention is to provide articles and material within the magazine that:

  • Can be understood by and are useful to both year 12 (lower sixth) and year 13 (upper sixth) students.
  • Support syllabus material to assist insight, improve awareness and increase motivation.
  • Illustrate physics in action to provide context and breadth of knowledge.
  • Develop reasoning skills, problem-solving abilities and examination technique.
  • Provide deeper insights into selected areas, allowing the pursuit of specialised topics.

Above all, each article should be a good read, telling a story that describes some interesting physics. We will have succeeded if you feel motivated in your studies or are intrigued by something you’ve read in the magazine.

A sample of the contents of the magazine is available.

The magazine does not publish book reviews, and the editors regret that they are unable to return unsolicited copies of books sent for review.

Origins

Physics Review magazine was first conceived in May 1990 when Philip Allan publishers were planning to launch a new physics magazine to extend their range of A-level support magazines. They sought original ideas from a number of university physics departments concerning the establishment of such a magazine.

Several staff at York were particularly excited by the possibilities and Professor Jim Matthew (Department of Physics) and Dr John Szymanski (Department of Electronics) jointly wrote a proposal outlining a range of possible approaches to the design, content and overall philosophy of the new magazine. This proposal was successful and led to the establishment of a multidisciplinary editorial board based at York, whose joint efforts led to the first issue being circulated to schools in September of 1991.