How to Do Well in Physics?

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>Hi, I've always had trouble doing physics and doing well in my tests. My average score on the tests are usually a 50%. It's not that I don't understand the concept but that I have huge amounts of trouble in applying them in a timely fashion. When I learn a hard science like physics, I need months to fully master the master the material, not weeks like I have in the quarter system at my school. My professor has suggested I do a bunch of practice problems before the test to get acquainted with the material, but I did well over 100 problems for my last midterm and still feel like I only got through half of the problems well.</p>

<p>How do I do well in a class I always do badly in?</p>

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<p>Have you ever thought that maybe you should switch majors?</p>

<p>It’s not really quantity, though. It’s quality. It’s hard to learn something over the course of ten weeks, but you really just have to grit your teeth and put in that extra time. They usually weed people out who can’t do it fast enough for a reason. Think about when you get to the higher level classes. You’re going to have the same amount of time to master advanced material as the basic material. </p>

<p>I can’t really tell you that there’s a magic solution to your problem if you’re going to need more time than is given to master the material to get good grades on the tests.</p>

<p>Just put in much more time into studying it. I think that’s all you can do at this point other than switch majors.</p>

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<p>You say that quality supersedes quantity yet you tell me to spend more time studying. Can you expand more on the first point? What “quality” things should I do that you don’t think I’m doing?</p>

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<p>Just an approach, I guess. I didn’t do a crazy amount of problems as a freshman or sophomore, I just read the chapter and spent time understanding it as quickly and fast as I could. Then I looked at what looked like interesting and hard problems and did those. Come exam time, there weren’t any surprises. But that’s me, I don’t know how your brain works. Maybe you need to do every single problem in the book to gain the same level of understanding as someone who simply reads the book and chooses interesting problems. Maybe it’s the repetition that will give you an idea of what is to be expected, I don’t know. It’s just when I say quality over quantity is that you do not need to do the same problem in my opinion that’s just reworded slightly or tweaked a minor detail that essentially follows the same process. If you know what to do right away, move on. And when I say quality, maybe you don’t put in enough time? What takes a person an hour could take someone a whole day. I don’t know how fast you learn but a quarter system can be unforgiving, I learned that my first quarter transferring from a semester based college to a quarter based college. I just know the process shouldn’t feel mechanical as if you’re solving integral after integral like in calculus classes. If you need to do all the problems you can, do them, but in my personal experience you do not need to if you understand the material. In my upper-division physics classes right now we are told to do “2/3rds” of what the teacher picks to get a “good feel” for the problems. Skip the ones you know you can do. </p>

<p>If you’re taking lower-division physics, I suggest tutoring. I think it also helps to be able to teach someone the material or talk about it with someone else by forming a study group. I’m not a physics major, just a minor plus a little more, but you benefit from tossing around ideas and getting other people’s perspective on problems you might not otherwise have thought of. They can also help elucidate the concepts so that you “truly” understand over having to slog through hundreds of problems yet not demonstrate that you truly understood the material on the exams. Go to office hours! I’ve only ever done it once, but I know teachers are willing to help you if you’re struggling.</p>

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<p>I do feel like I’m not having enough time. I agree that quality is preferable to quantity. My friend, who consistently does well in the physics tests, usually only does maybe 10 practice problems per each midterm exam. Those 10 problems are some of the hardest in the book, and they are usually similar in rigor to the test problems.</p>

<p>I feel like in order to do those harder problems, I need to do get the fundamental easier problems right, but then I run out of time for those more difficult exercises. :(</p>

<p>And my physics professor’s office hours usually compose of him giving out the same problem-solving advice I’ve heard way too many times before from my other physics teachers. I also have the solutions guide to virtually every problem assigned though; the issue is that there’s too much breadth and depth for me to digest and not enough time.</p>

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<p>Getting together with a study group can be very beneficial. It’s quite likely that you’re not the only person struggling in the class. I’m a physics major, and it comes pretty easily to me…but I’ve seen plenty of people for whom it does not come easily. </p>

<p>Getting together with some other people and studying together is a good option to consider. You might be stuck on a part that someone else understands, and you might understand a different part that they’re stuck on. Collectively, you will probably be able to work through the problem sets. Sitting down and talking about the process with people as you’re going through the process is very helpful.</p>

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<p>“They usually weed people out who can’t do it fast enough for a reason. Think about when you get to the higher level classes. You’re going to have the same amount of time to master advanced material as the basic material.”</p>

<p>I’ve seen this so many times on this forum. You have a point, but for me physics was harder than it needed to be. All my engineering classes have been FAR easier.</p>

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<p>I don’t know if they’re harder than they need to be. I don’t know much about engineering, although one of my friends is ME and taking physics classes alongside me. </p>

<p>We just had our midterm Wednesday. I spent my Sunday doing all of the homework (basically procrastinated for 4 weeks and skipped one week of class) that was assigned to us as practice up to a certain point and then spent Monday going over the new material after a long day of classes. Tuesday I got with a friend and we worked problem after problem until our eyes grew tired. I only had an early morning class that day. Lots of coffee involved. I even bought a monster energy drink.</p>

<p>When the actual exam came, it was nothing like the homework. It was just two questions we had to do in class over an hour. So those weren’t bad. I brute forced the first problem and my friend tried to do something elegant with it. He would’ve gotten the same answer if his algebra skills were stronger. The second problem involved a proof. The take home portion of the test was alright except this one problem I got stuck on and left half finished. I consulted my friend about it and we spent probably 3-5 hours on it getting nowhere, just coming up with a bunch of theories really that were already proven on the internet. Even after we turned in the exam the next day we were still trying to solve the problem afterwards. I eventually found the answer after a few hours of googling (not kidding) and our ideas that morning closely paralleled what was going on in the problem. But yeah, the take home portion was all derivations. </p>

<p>Now that we know that homework doesn’t help at all with the problems on the test, we’re probably going to do the bare minimum on the homework and really just focus on the theory. Sometimes though doing a lot of problems helps, but the hardest ones that we did that involved a lot of drawing and thinking were not even touched on. I don’t know why he assigned so many problems on those.</p>

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<p>I’ve found that doing problem after problem really isn’t that beneficial to me in physics. In many classes, that really is necessary, but in physics it’s different. Having a more thorough understanding of the concepts behind what you’re doing is far more important.</p>

<p>What I’ve found is that the problems in my textbook are very drastically different from the problems that my professor gives us in class and on exams. I’ve found it more beneficial to review notes and rework the in class examples.</p>

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<p>You can’t spam problems to prepare for physics… chemistry and calculus, perhaps you could pull it (Intro level) because of the limitations on problem variety. Most intro level physics is unique compared to what most freshmen are used to because there are so many possible questions to test understanding of the fundamentals of physics. So what can you do? </p>

<p>You need to gain some understanding of the concepts to do well in (most) physics classes. And you’ll find this will continue to be the case if you are continuing in physics or engineering. I recommend making up your own problem; start with the simplest situation and think about what is happening in it. Then change your problem to make it more complicated. See how your equations change as a result of the adjustment to the situation you created. Use simple values for parameters to make computations quicker and so you can clearly see relationships between your varying situations.</p>

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<p>Ok, I hate to bring up an oldish thread, but I find it weird how all of my physics professors/ instructors so far have advised me to do as many problems as I can to prepare for the tests. I guess what they’re assuming is that the students must have a full understanding of the concepts underlying the problems before they can successfully do them. The way I was doing it was opposite: I would do the problems in hope that they would teach me the concepts. So maybe that’s why.</p>

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<p>

I don’t believe that’s what they think. Instead I imagine they want to help students discover the difference between recognition and recall. As one cognitive scientist wrote

This is an excellent article I suggest you read, as well as a 2nd one he wrote [AFT</a> - A Union of Professionals - Ask the Cognitive Scientist](<a href=“http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/spring2004/willingham.cfm]AFT”>Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Practice Makes Perfect—But Only If You Practice beyond the Point of Perfection)</p>

<p>What your teachers are asking you to do, and what successful students have discovered, is that solving practice problems strips away the illusion of thinking you understand when you don’t. If you understand the concepts then you can apply them to solve problems.

This is from your first post. I disagree. You understand them, I’d bet, in the meaning that you can repeat them and use to solve simple problems, but if you are unable to apply to more difficult problems them then you likely have what that scientist terms “shallow knowledge”. See [AFT</a> - A Union of Professionals - Ask the Cognitive Scientist](<a href=“http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2003/willingham.cfm]AFT”>Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Students Remember...What They Think About)

The real issue is you aren’t studying enough. There is a solution that’s easy to say, hard to do. Many good students find they need to spend 10 hours or so each week studying for math and science classes. Maybe your friend in post #5 is a genius, maybe he came into the class with a lot of background knowledge that made this class easy, maybe he studies on the sly and doesn’t tell you about it. Doesn’t matter. If a midterm covers 7 weeks of class that is 70 hours you probably should have spent preparing for the test. I doubt your 100 problems took you that much time. Furthermore it is well known that distributed practice is much more effective in learning something than cramming the last day or two.</p>

<p>If you want to do well on the next test, do this. Go buy the “Physics Problem Solver” book. Every week practice solving the problems in the book that match what your class is doing. Spend at least 10 hours per week total on your class; homework plus this study. You might need more because there are concepts already covered that you probably don’t know that well.</p>

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<p>I’m very confused by the conflicting advice I’ve been given. My math/physics teachers have always told me that one can’t do well in those classes by mostly reading the material, but good grades come from doing the problem sets; I mean, that’s usually what the homework is, isn’t it? And so I try to do both the reading and the problem sets. If I don’t spend enough time on the reading, the problem sets get more difficult. On the other hand, if I spend too much time on the reading, I have less time on doing the problems.</p>

<p>But again, the midterm I was talking about last quarter only covered 3 weeks of material (three chapters) yet I still failed it even with way more than 10 hours (more like 15) studied per week. It’s not hard to see that my hope has withered at this point.</p>

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<p>There’s surefire answer or right and wrong way to do things. You just have to figure out something that works for you.</p>

<p>Your professors are right. If you JUST read the material but don’t do any problems, you probably won’t know how to apply the information you read to a new problem. Since the tests are likely problem-based, then you probably won’t do well on the tests. However, if you JUST do problems and don’t understand any of the concepts, then you won’t know how to do the problems. You can look up the solution and think you understand it, but when it comes to do the problem by yourself on the test, you still don’t understand how to do it. So the answer is you have to do both, and you have to keep doing both until you get it. For some people, that might only take a couple of hours a week, and for others, that might take twenty. There’s no right answer. You just have to figure out a system that works for you.</p>

<p>What I would recommend is to try to get an understanding of the concepts (through lecture, through the reading, whatever works for you; if you’re pressed for time, I’d recommend focusing on the concepts presented in lecture–perhaps, read those specific sections if you have to), and then practice doing the problems for that concept. Try to do a range of problems (don’t just do the easy ones, don’t just do one kind of problem, etc), and you’ll likely find that with different concepts there are common types of problems that keep appearing. They might have different variations or different numbers, but if you get the reasoning behind the problem, you should be able to figure it out.</p>

<p>Also, don’t just try the problem, look at the solution, and then move on with your life. If you get the problem wrong, look at the solution but figure out what you did wrong and then try again. Don’t just memorize the steps to solve the problem. Think about WHY you’re using the equations that you’re using, or why you’re doing the step that your doing. That way if you have a different problem on the test or if they present you with the same concept in a different way, you’re in a better position to figure out what you should do.</p>

<p>So the advice isn’t conflicting because you really, you have to do both: learn the concept AND how to apply it to a problem. It might take you forever to figure out how to do that but if you want to do well in these classes, you just have to do what it takes.</p>

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<p>Ok, so just to be clear, when studying physics for an incoming test, should I focus more on the concepts or the problems? Cal Newport suggests the problems but to do the problems requires understanding the concepts. Understanding the concepts alone won’t teach one to apply the concepts to do problems. Honestly, the best answer seems to be to focus on both equally and fully but there’s an obvious time restriction.</p>

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<p>They’re both equally important. You don’t want to focus solely on one at the expense of the other. Broadly speaking, I’d say it’s more important to understand it from a conceptual perspective, because that’s the foundation of the problem solving. But, that doesn’t really negate the importance of understanding how to solve an array of types of problems.</p>