Part IA Mathematics (For Natural Scientists)

The first-year maths course taken (mainly) by Natural Scientists at the University of Cambridge. For many people, the only Mathematics course they will take during their degree. The contents of each term are broadly as follows:

  1. Michaelmas: A lightning review of the important bits of A-Level Maths and Further Maths, with some new stuff on nested integration, limits and series.
  2. Lent: Ordinary differential equations, scalar fields and multivariable calculus with applications in thermodynamics, vector fields and vector calculus, Lagrange multipliers, Fourier series.
  3. Easter: Linear algebra and matrices, partial differential equations.
Note that there are two variants of this course: Maths A and Maths B. The italic topics above are only covered in the B course, which is a little more fast-paced. Broadly speaking, if you want to take Physics and/or Maths in second year, you should take Maths B. If not, then take whichever one you like.

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Part IB Mathematics (For Natural Scientists)

The second-year maths course taken by Natural Scientists at the University of Cambridge. An extremely dense course aimed primarily at physicists and physical chemists, containing far more maths than you are likely to ever need. The contents of each term are broadly as follows:

  1. Michaelmas: Fourier transforms, vector calculus, partial differential equations, Green's functions, linear algebra, real analysis, series solutions of ordinary differential equations.
  2. Lent: Sturm-Liouville theory, calculus of variations, Laplace and Poisson's equations, Cartesian tensors, complex analysis and contour integration, integral transforms.
  3. Easter: Normal modes, group theory, representation theory.
I strongly recommend anyone taking this course to learn a bit of group theory over the Christmas and/or Easter vacations. Since group theory is only introduced in Easter term, during which time you will hopefully be revising for your end of year exams, having already looked at some group theory by this point helps enormously with the workload. See below for some notes I have written which you may wish to glance over.

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Part II Stellar Structure and Evolution

A third-year astrophysics course taken in Michaelmas as part of Part II Astrophysics. The course covers the basics of the structure and evolution of stars, and also introduces many key astronomical concepts that are required for other courses in Part II and Part III.

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