Year 12 Work Experience Week

Work experience is a valuable part of everyone’s employment journey. The physics department at the University of Liverpool runs a week-long summer placement scheme for Year 12 students interested in studying physics.

Applications for our summer 2026 work experience week will open January 2026. To find out more about the application process, or if you have any questions, please contact Physics Work Experience.

Please note that our work experience week will take place on campus at the University of Liverpool, and that no travel assistance or accommodation can be offered.

Read on below to find out what students got up to in our 2025 work experience week.

Work Experience 2025

In July, the Department of Physics hosted ~32 A-level students for a week-long work experience placement. The students, who travelled in from both the city region and from much further afield, spent the week gaining experience in what it’s like to study physics at the University of Liverpool and what a career in research might look like.

The week started with hands-on team building challenges and a series of talks covering a range of research areas (Accelerator Physics, Astrophysics, Condensed Matter Physics, Geophysics, Nuclear Physics, and Particle Physics).

Over the next few days students were given hands-on introductions to experimental nuclear physics, neutrino physics, and condensed matter physics, before selecting a group research project to work on. Projects included exploring nuclear models through radiation measurements, investigating material properties with a scanning electron microscope, searching for dark matter candidates, measuring stellar distances, and locating the foundations of the old University of Liverpool college using ground-penetrating radar.

Finally, the week ended with a Friday trip to tour Daresbury laboratory and the Cockroft Institute (photo below). Here there was a chance to see the particle accelerator CLARA, the massive detector assemblies for DUNE being manufactured, as well as numerous other labs and facilities.