<p>ive taken normal high school physics .. and im taking ap physics B this year. what can i do to start studying? i'm good at physics and want to go somewhere with it.</p>
<p>any suggestions will help. thanks</p>
<p>I agree I'd like to know also.</p>
<p>Any help would be great =D</p>
<p>study physics</p>
<p>ok, i'm going to write everything here because this question has been posed about 12 times and i want to have a link to direct people if it ever gets asked in the future. just so you know, i made the us physics team twice and i went to ipho this year, so i know how this works.</p>
<p>be aware that the physics olympiad is a problem-solving competition; memorizing stuff will not get you far. practice makes perfect. if you ever find yourself in a time crunch, and you have to choose between getting practice on stuff you may have already learned versus learning random new stuff, do the practice. that being said, here's what you need to know:</p>
<p>mathematical prerequisites: know everything in BC Calculus very well. for the prelim/quarterfinal: knowing mechanics and e+m at at least the physics C level in and out should be your top priority. you're not going to make it to the semifinal unless you know that stuff. at the semifinal level, you should know some basic things about alternating current circuits, waves (e.g. basic properties, single slit/double slit/n-slit diffraction, sound waves, electromagnetic waves, working with wavefunctions), modern physics (special relativity - at least at the physics B level but knowing some tricks like invariants and four-vectors can help, photoelectric effect, compton effect, stefan-boltzmann law, heisenberg uncertainty principle), and thermodynamics <em>with calculus</em> (differential definitions of thermodynamic quantities, differential statements of thermodynamic laws, adiabatics). for camp, you should know everything on the olympiad syllabus. if you qualify for the ipho, you will be informed of what you need to do... i won't spoil that surprise.</p>
<p>now, how to actually practice this stuff:</p>
<p>1) do old problems. this will help you become better at thinking of creative solutions, and it will teach you a bunch of common olympiad tricks. problem books like irodov's "general questions in physics" are good. to get some actual experience in exams, the AAPT sells a cd of old exams on their website: <a href="http://aapt.org/Store/description.cfm?ID=CD-PTER&Category=All&Type=All&Level=All&Keywords=&Site=%5B/url%5D">http://aapt.org/Store/description.cfm?ID=CD-PTER&Category=All&Type=All&Level=All&Keywords=&Site=</a>
do old ipho exams. they are located here: <a href="http://www.jyu.fi/kastdk/olympiads/%5B/url%5D">http://www.jyu.fi/kastdk/olympiads/</a></p>
<p>general advice for solving problems: you certainly don't need to do this for every practice exam, but time yourself on a couple at least so that you know what kind of time crunch you may be up against. also, problem solving takes time to get good at. if you're just starting out, don't try to beat the learning curve; your time is better spent doing a prelim FRQ or a semifinal that you have a chance of solving than spending two weeks staring blankly at the 2003 ipho theoretical exam. if you get stuck, don't panic. write down physical principles that might be relevant. a lot of the time, you can get 2 points for writing trivial things like "E<em>before = E</em>after." also, this can remind you of other principles that might be relevant. brainstorm -- if you can't solve a mechanics problem from the force balance, try keeping track of energy, etc. double check your work. you can catch things like dimensionally incorrect answers, arithmetic mistakes, etc. this way.</p>
<p>2) read quality physics books. good intro physics books include halliday/reznick, serway/jewett (which i personally used). for a more advanced and thorough treatment, the feynman lectures on physics, introduction to electrodynamics by griffiths, and typical introductory modern physics books are great. what you're trying to get out of your reading is not just knowledge of formulae, but a broad qualitative understanding of physics. most of the time, the hardest thing about a physics olympiad question is figuring out what physical principles/areas of physics are relevant in modeling the scenario at hand.</p>
<p>3) talk to your friends about physics. talk to your teacher about physics. you learn a lot by bouncing ideas off of other people.</p>
<p>info for the 2008 contest: word on the street is that they will probably move from a 2-test system to a 3-test system. the prelim will kinda be like the AMC (all multiple choice) and it will probably be mechanics only. the quarterfinal will be free response in mechanics and e+m. the semifinal will be like it's always been: a lot harder than the preliminary exams and covering everything.</p>
<p>hope this helps. i'm writing questions for next year's contest, and i might be invited to grade semifinal papers, so i might run into some of your work. good luck, folks.</p>
<p>Does your school have to administer the test?</p>
<p>you need to affiliate yourself with a school and you need to say who your physics teacher is, but there isn't any super-secret procedure. if you can find a teacher to proctor the test and sign off on the forms (usually your physics teacher), you can take the exam. the entrance fee is something like 15 dollars? i don't remember... they'll announce it when the registration forms come out.</p>
<p>wow, so physics C is almost the bare - minimum. is it really possible to learn the required material by the time the tests roll around? crap ..</p>
<p>well, they're trying to make the preliminary test easier in order to attract more participation, so you can probably make quarterfinals if you know physics B mechanics well. the quarterfinal test is a new exam, and i don't know how that's going to work, but I suspect it would be pretty much at or a little beyond physics C level (not quite as hard as semifinal problems, of course). if you're just starting physics B now, being totally ready for the semifinal when that rolls around will be incredibly tough. as a junior, however, you do have some extra wiggle room since it's easier to make the US Physics Team as a junior than as a senior. if you know physics C mechanics and e+m really well and you're very careful on the exam, you can probably still make the team even if you don't really know the other topics (although camp will be an even more intense learning experience if this is the case!). in my junior year, i was already taking physics C, and i still found it difficult to cover everything before the semifinal.</p>
<p>that being said, don't give up hope. what i listed is what you ideally would know if you wanted to be prepared for all possible things that you might encounter on the exam, but it's definitely, definitely possible to get away with less. for example, one kid who won a gold medal at ipho his senior year was in something like your predicament his junior year. he made the team having only taken physics c: mechanics! he was a huge physics enthusiast, though: he taught himself a lot of stuff, but he definitely didn't have it totally down. also, he was incredibly brilliant and hardworking. he studied pretty intensely before the camp, and he filled in all the gaps in his knowledge in like four hours just by asking the coaches all the questions he had. he was the alternate to the ipho team that year. i met him when he was a senior... pretty talented fellow.</p>
<p>thanks for info, you're great.</p>
<p>Hello,</p>
<p>Thank you for your information. It was very helpful. I had a couple of questions, though. I am currently a sophomore in AP Physics B and I am taking the Physics Olympiad for experience. I don’t know Calc BC, but I will next year. I am hoping to make the quarterfinal round this year and eventually the semifinal round next year. Do you have any tips for me to study for the quarterfinal exam this year?</p>
<p>If you want to win, except to have a good deal of knowledge in thermal physics, quantum mechanics, optics, solid state physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics (particularly black hole physics, hawking radiation and quantum gravity). Study up on these subjects and you’ll have a fairly good chance.</p>
<p>was that supposed to be sarcasm</p>
<p>Yes, it was. And you don’t need to know four vectors for the semis - or even calculus for the preliminary round. Physics B is perfectly sufficient for the f=ma exam.</p>
<p>I do believe Iostream hasn’t done the USAPhO in a while - they’ve dumbed it down significantly. The quarterfinal exam was removed a few years ago.</p>
<p>to iostream, mapletree7, or anyone else, do you know what score (approximately) is needed on the semi-final to make the team? I would assume that it is not nearly 100%, given then broad topic selection, but they so not say on the website.
thanks!</p>