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Whatever your needs, feel free to pick the enormous brains of the A•STAR team and we’ll do our best to help.

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How do I apply to the Wingara Mura – Bunga Barrabugu Summer Program?

Good question, my fine feathered friends! Information about and application materials for the Summer Program will be coming out very soon! Keep an eye on this space for it.

In the meantime it might also be an idea to check out our coverage from previous years; although some of the programs will change in future years but it will give you a good idea about what programs that will be on offer.

What are the subject prerequisites to study at Sydney Uni?

At the moment, there are no subject prerequisites to study at the University of Sydney. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about your subject selection.

Although no one is going to stop you from enrolling in an engineering degree if you didn’t study Mathematics Extension 1 and Physics or Chemistry in high school, that knowledge is still assumed.

Assumed knowledge is what we expect you to already have when you start a particular degree course. It is not required for admission, but it will help you to understand and succeed in your studies. If you don’t have the assumed knowledge you might find it difficult to keep up, as your lecturers will assume that you already have this knowledge.

If you’re uncertain about the assumed knowledge for a given course, speak to your school’s guidance counsellor, or call Sydney Uni at 1800 SYD UNI (1800 793 864).

That article you posted about “killing the fat man” was really interesting. Could you tell me any more?

Sure can! The Internet, being the magical place that it is, has a whole bunch of resources dedicated to this kind of thing.

If you’re interested in seeing a video about the trolley problems that covers a lot of the same ground, the video at the start of this page is pretty excellent.

However, if you’d like something a little more advanced, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Doing vs. Allowing Harm is an excellent place to start.

Why is the sky blue instead of, say, red?

The sky is blue instead of red because of a physical process known as Rayleigh scattering. In very simple terms, when sunlight hits air molecules, the light bounces away – it “scatters”.

However, not all the light is scattered at the same rate. Instead, shorter wavelengths – blues and greens – are scattered more strongly than longer wavelengths – red and oranges. This, coupled with the colour of the sun and the fact that our atmosphere blocks light radiation with the shortest wavelengths – indigo and ultraviolet – means that the sky looks blue.