Physics and Astronomy
Physics and Astronomy aim to understand the behaviour of matter: from the scale of subatomic particles to that of the Universe itself. While past discoveries are of fundamental importance to science and all its applications, our disciplines contrive to be very active and fruitful fields of research.The University of Canterbury has been compared to a village consisting of many groups of people. Even after several years of study you will still be exploring the “streets” of this village, for it consists of many teaching and research areas. The Department of Physics and Astronomy is one of the larger departments at the University of Canterbury. We have 18 continuing academic staff, 20 support staff, and more than 45 research students.
The Department manages New Zealand’s largest telescopes at Mount John University Observatory, near Lake Tekapo, the Birdlings Flat radar facility, and the ring laser facility in the Cashmere Cavern.They also have atmospheric research activities at Scott Base and Antarctica. Medical physics activities occur at Christchurch and St Georges Hospitals and we have recently joined the CERN Medipix collaboration. The University has recently joined the consortium building the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). They have joined the Compact Muon Solenoid collaboration which studies proton collisions from the CMS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.The Nanostructure Engineering Science and Technology Group (NEST) and MacDiarmid Institute joint research effort with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Industrial Research Limited.
For more information, please visit http://www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz