<p>One of my close friends did a test in AP Phys but forgot to change his calculator back into degree mode, so his answers all came out extremely wrong. This caused his grade in the class to fall extremely low (low 50's) and he is an A and B+ student. I am trying to advise him on talking with the teacher, but the teacher will not help. I feel like his entire GPA and thus high school career rested on pressing one button on a calculator. Any advise on what I should say to help him?</p>
<p>What is there to do? He made a mistake. It doesn't seem fair, but that's how it is.</p>
<p>lol i just did a physics lab where we had to find the projectile of a launched ball, and my lab partner (who did all the work) had his calculator set to radians, and we came up with like a completely wrong answer. we shot the ball like about half the lab's distance away from where it was supposed to go. our teacher had a sense of humor about it though.</p>
<p>I do sympathize with your friend, but such things can be prevented with a basic knowledge of trigonometry. I'm not good with advice, but your friend should ask if he can take a retake, even if it's harder.</p>
<p>Hah... this reminds me how I almost did the same thing in the AP calc exam</p>
<p>Luckily I was thinking "this can't be right" or else I would've missed so many questions</p>
<p>That's why you always check what mode you're in.</p>
<p>That is too bad. That happened to a person in my physics class. Our teacher did not let her retake, his reasoning was that the answers came out in some cases so far off that they with any common sense, she should have noticed. He said it told him that the she just memorized how to do the type of problem and just plugged them into the calculator, not wanting to understand the concept or the answer that they got, but just in search of the A. He took a bit of a hard line, and I feel bad for the person, but I think I have to agree with his reasoning.</p>
<p>i too, just took a physics test today....however, I remebered to change my Ti-83 mode to degree.</p>
<p>if the teacher isn't willing to compromise, then there's in nothing he can do. Just tell him to make sure that he does every other assigment perfectly, and gets 100's on all his test (it CAN be done!).</p>
<p>are you kidding me? a reasonable teacher would do the right work and set his calculator to radians to see if the kid got his concepts right. if he did, then he should award him all points except for a certain amount, as error carried forward. that's just mind boggling that a teacher would do that to his student because of a simple mode conflict. if he were so ***ing adamant about it, and our teacher is, then he would simply tell everyone to make *sure their calcs are in degree mode.</p>
<p>ridiculous.</p>
<p>IlikeDice has a point. Physics isn't about algebra or formulas; it's about the concepts. If I were the teacher then I would do what Dice suggested, but I'm not (sometimes people are unreasonable), which sucks. Hope it works out for your friend, man.</p>
<p>Too bad the teacher is not being more understanding. It IS a good idea to check your answers, though, to see if they are in the expected ballpark.</p>
<p>Ouch, I'm sorry to hear that. I almost did the same thing a few times. Yes, it is important to check and see if the answer is in the expected ballpark. I think though that the teacher should've been nicer and at least gave him a 75% or above if he set up the problem correctly. If he wants to argue his score that's a good platform to set it on. The AP test isn't about getting the right answer - it is about applying the concepts.</p>
<p>This is one argument for multiple-choice tests. (Or alternatively, physics tests that require symbolic rather than numerical answers.)</p>
<p>I do agree with ILikeDice, though.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This is one argument for multiple-choice tests. (Or alternatively, physics tests that require symbolic rather than numerical answers.)</p>
<p>I do agree with ILikeDice, though.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The last exam I had last Friday (week before yesterday), there was a question that involved no numbers. My teacher is indeed shying us away from numerical calculations.</p>
<p>MC is mainly concepts, and FR is applying those concepts to real-life type problems.</p>
<p>haha I was doing a ap phys worksheet today and I kept getting negative answers for work that was obviously positive and I was getting really mad...till I realized I was still in rads from trig class haha.</p>
<p>^LoL zzzzzzzz</p>
<p>Boy, I just can't wait for all this stuff to happen to me! (AP Chem and pre-calc this year, but it's not all weird like that yet)</p>
<p>Heh this happened to me like a week ago.. I went up to the teacher and he said he will probably give me some points back... I had all the correct concepts and wrote everything down correctly but the stupid radians mode changed my score from a 100 to a 76...</p>
<p>Someone did that in my math class (wrong mode) and after she told the teacher, the teacher checked her ans by converting them and she got an A instead of an F</p>
<p>I did this on my final exam, only I didn't know it yet. I did know that my answers were way off, so the next morning I went and talked to my teacher (this was for Alg 2). I simply said I was very concerned about the way my exam went, and he said he was concerned too, and he showed me the grade (B-). I had everything right but the trig problems, which were worth big points. He gave me the exam back and had me redo those 3 problems, and while I was redoing them I found that I had my calculator set wrong. So I changed the answers, and I got a 100 on the exam.</p>
<p>In any situation like that, it really helps if you show some effort on your part to try to make things right.</p>