"How do I impress the interviewers?" is the heavy question which may form the focus of a lot of those mid-shower contemplations and more often than not, the answer you arrive at is probably an over-complicated one. It is easy to think that demonstrating in-depth knowledge about some fascinating part of physics, like some "complex", beyond-school-level concept is what will guarantee you a place but this is not quite how it works. Yes, being able to boast an understanding of quantum mechanics, relativity, black holes, string theory (and the list goes on) may make you feel like the next Einstein but true understanding comes from really appreciating the core of physics and its mathematical underpinning. We must learn our alphabet and grammar rules before we can begin to even interpret or write a story. So if there is something you should aim to dive deep into, it is in fact first and fore-most the topics covered in A Level. Try to see if you understand each concept from first principles. Don't take anything you are told for granted. Ask "why?". Try to derive/ look up the derivations of equations that you may have been told to just accept and memorise. It is through this process of questioning, researching and getting very confused, that you will understand the true essence of physics.

We are sure you want to just do some questions at this point but before you start, we would like to make some book recommendations. Again this is just a selection of our personal "favourites" based on what we enjoyed/ found useful at the time and by no means a list of compulsory reads, so do not feel the need to go and buy all of these books or even read them. We would also like to mention that the author of the last book has also published core, mechanics and statistics books, which could be very useful for A level revision. We appreciate that acquiring hard copies of books may be an expensive feat and strongly urge searching for online pdf versions or hitting the library before going on a spending spree - we strongly believe in the prospect of the attainment of knowledge without needing to become broke! That said, we also want to stress the internet is a wonderful place full of hidden gems and abundant in all sorts of sources of information so don't hold back from typing random things into our good old friend Mr. Google and exploring the various search results he so kindly provides us. 

Below we have included some books we thought could be particularly useful/ enlightening/ "fun". These books are either books we have read ourselves or those which friends/ professors have recommended to us to use as references which offer a more rigorous outlook into physics topics introduced during A Level. We have tried to provide brief synopses of each too so you can make the call on whether this sounds like something you may wish to read further. Other perhaps less textbook-y books (amongst other things) are discussed further on our Personal Statements (consumables) page.