Physics Comment Magazine March 2018 Issue Physics Comment March 2018_v1.3 | Page 22

SA Physics Benchmark Statement
The SA Physics Benchmark Statement is now available of the SAIP website: http://saip.org.za/
images/Edited_and_checked._Benchmark_Statement_V1-3.pdf
Benchmarks are formulated by a group comprising participants who are representative of the sector, they have
to take a broad approach to integrate concerns at regional and national levels. After consultation with
physicists on a regional basis, a Benchmark Statement Task Team (consisting of seven members) was
constituted, representing the 17 physics departments in the country. The Task Team has now completed
this first version of the benchmark statement, which will be updated from time to time through
consultations with the South African physics community.
It is up to each institution to formulate the precise and measurable indicators that apply to its situation in the
context of various national policies, including the Higher Education Qualifications Framework, Level
Indicators, and the generic Qualification Standard for the Bachelor of Science degree, as well as the respective
university rules.
The statement articulates that students in physics should learn:
• how to formulate and tackle problems in physics. For example, they should learn how to identify the
appropriate physical principles, how to use special and limiting cases and order-of-magnitude estimates
to guide their thinking about a problem and how to present the solution, making their assumptions
and approximations explicit;
• how to use mathematics to describe the physical world. They should have an understanding Page
7 Page 8 4.2. Ethical behaviour: Students should appreciate that to fabricate, falsify or misrepresent
data or to commit of mathematical modelling and of the role of approximation;
• how to plan, execute and report the results of an experiment or investigation. They should be able
to use appropriate methods to analyse their data and to evaluate the level of its uncertainty. They
should also be able to relate any conclusions they make to current theories of the physics involved;
• to compare critically the results of model calculations with those from experiment and observation.
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