<p>Hi. I don't own a graphing calculator, I never bothered getting one in HS since our teachers would let us use our phones and we didn't really require difficult math (plus there's a lot of great free graphing apps). But I'm an incoming freshman and I know that professors will be a lot more strict with the whole using phones as calculators thing, so I'm wondering, what's the best graphing calculator for a Physics major? </p>
<p>You might not even need one. Instead of buying one now, wait until you take your math classes and ask the professor about what calculators are allowed (if any). Either way, you’re better off learning something like Mathematica (it should be heavily discounted for you as a student) instead of graphing calculators.</p>
<p>In our physics classes at illinois Tech, we don’t allow calculators at all for exams and with a laptop you can do all the plotting you want with gnuplot.</p>
<p>I personally do recommend a calculator for the simple reason that it’s far more convenient than having to rely on Mathematica. Very nice program, I use it a lot, but it’s also a pain to have to have a computer on hand to do homework (not to mention a massive distraction). Probably won’t be able to use it on lower level math tests, where you are expected to learn to do math by hand, but there comes a point where it’s not reasonable to expect to be able to solve equations by hand, especially in physics.</p>
<p>I recommend the TI-89. Being able to solve symbolic algebra is a very massive plus. The solve, differentiate, and integrate functions save you a massive amount of time once you get over the learning curve.</p>
<p>For physics, you don’t generally need anything too advanced. Having integration/differentiation capabilities might be nice at times.</p>
<p>I’m a physics major, and I have a TI-84+ Silver Edition. I’ve never really felt that I needed anything more advanced. For the most part, I only really use it for arithmetic calculations. I use the graphing capabilities to check the accuracy of my graphs. Beyond that, I don’t really find much of a need for the complicated functions of it. I don’t even know how to do 95% of the things that it can do. </p>
<p>A lot of professors won’t allow calculators that are more advanced than the TI-84. The TI-89 is used by a lot of engineering and physics students because it has algebra solving functionality and such, which can come in handy at times. But it’s worth pointing out that a lot of students become too dependent on these algebra solvers. There was a guy in my lab group last semester that was horribly behind with his algebra skills. He relied on the algebra solving functionality of his calculator almost all the time. The other three of us in the lab group would whip right through our algebra, and we’d be done by the time he had half of it entered into the calculator. You don’t want to let a calculator do too much of your work for you. </p>
<p>Oh, and just to clarify…you almost definitely will be banned from using a phone as a calculator in college. I’m surprised they were even allowed in high school. What’s to stop someone from pulling up the Wolfram Alpha app to solve everything for them?</p>
<p>Just for the sake of studying and understanding some concepts, I recommend the app GraphMe on iOS, it can
graph vector fields & trajectories among other things. </p>
<p>Some of the graphing calculators that you can get on Android phones and tablets can be very useful study tools too. They offer a lot more interactivity than most graphing calculators tend to offer. Even if you can’t use them on exams, they can be helpful in deepening your understanding of various types of graphs and they can offer much more intuitive and in depth tables and such. I have a graphing calculator app on my phone that I use on occasion. I forget the name of it. </p>