Planning Your Breadth Courses
Recommended Breadth Requirement Courses
Updated as of: November 16, 2020
Below are a list of courses that physics students have previously used to satisfy their breadth requirements as part of their degree. We remind you that your breadth requirement courses can be assessed as a CR/NCR.
Breadth 1: Creative and Cultural Representations
CLA160H1: Introduction to Classical Studies
Description: An introduction to major themes in the development of Greek and Roman civilization, literature and culture.
Pre-requisites: None
FAH215H1: Early Medieval Art and Architecture
Description: An overview of major monuments and themes in the art and architecture of Western Europe and the Byzantine East from the third until the eleventh century.
Pre-requisites: None
Breadth 2: Thought, Belief, and Behaviour
CLA203H1: Science in Antiquity
Description: The first scientific traditions in the classical Mediterranean and the Near East, with emphasis on Greek science. Discussions of early physical science, biology, mathematics, and astronomy, and their place in ancient life and thought, based on primary sources in translation. Designed for students in both the sciences and humanities.
Pre-requisites: None
CLA204H1: Introduction to Classical Mythology
Description: A survey of the myths and legends of ancient Greece (and their extension to Rome) with some consideration of their role in ancient and modern literature and art.
Pre-requisites: None
PSY100H1: Introductory Psychology
Description: A brief introductory survey of psychology as both a biological and social science. Topics will include physiological, learning, perceptual, motivational, cognitive, developmental, personality, abnormal, and social psychology.
Pre-requisites: None
PHL245H1: Modern Symbolic Logic
Description: An introduction to formal deductive logic. Semantics, symbolization, and techniques of natural deduction in sentential logic. Symbolization, natural deduction, and models in monadic predicate logic. Symbolization and natural deduction with polyadic predicates. Introduction to advanced concepts in first-order logic, such as operations, identity, and models.
Pre-requisites: None
Recommended Preparation: Any first-year math course that teaches proof structure
Breadth 3: Society and Its Institutions
JPH441H1: Physical Science in Contemporary Society
Description: Complex nature of the scientific method; connection between theory, concepts and experimental data; insufficiency of reductionism; characteristics of pathological and pseudo-science; public perception and misperception of science; science and public policy; ethical issues; trends in modern science.
Pre-requisites: PHY224H1/PHY250H1/PHY252H1/PHY254H1/PHY256H1/ENV235H1 or by permission of the instructor.
PhySU note: This course can also be used for your ethics requirement for your physics POSt!
Breadth 4: Living Things and Their Environment
ENV200H1: Assessing Global Change: Science and the Environment
Description: The perspective which scientists bring to the understanding and resolution of environmental concerns having global implications: atmospheric systems and climate change, the biosphere and conservation of biodiversity. This living things and their environment breadth course is intended to fulfill the environmental literacy requirement for students in the BA programs of the School of the Environment or the living things and their environment breadth course requirement for Commerce, Humanities and Social Science students
Pre-requisites: None
IMM250H1: The Immune System and Infectious Disease
Description: Students will be introduced to the basic concepts of immunity to infectious disease and how breakdown of the immune response can lead to auto-immunity. We will trace the history of current ideas in immunology and the immune response by examining how bacteria and viruses cause disease and the initial discoveries that led to such developments as vaccination. Current topical and newsworthy infectious diseases (HIV, tuberculosis, SARS, avian flu) will be used as examples of how the immune system copes with microbial infections.
Pre-requisites: None
Recommended Preparation: BIO120H1, BIO130H1
PSL432H1: Theoretical Physiology
Description: The content of the course changes from year to year, but is always a selection from mathematical topics in neurophysiology. Second-year calculus is mandatory. It would also be useful to have some familiarity with ordinary differential equations, introductory mathematical statistics, and programming, particularly in Matlab.
Pre-requisites: MAT235Y1/MAT237Y1/MAT257Y1/MAT267H1; APM346H1/MAT244H1
Recommended Preparation: PHY200-series; PSL201Y/300H1/302Y1/(BIO270H1, BIO271H1)
PhySU note: This course can also be used towards a math major or minor POSt!
Breadth 5: The Physical and Mathematical Universes
This category is covered by any physics or mathematics courses.