<p>When I was taking Calc 1 as a college freshman last semester, I got a lot of help from a few student-friendly books like "The Calculus Lifesaver," "How to Ace Calculus" and "The Humungous Book of Calculus Problems."</p>
<p>Now I'm in the first semester of the calculus-based physics sequence (Mechanics and Heat). Is there any similar to the above that people have found helpful for this class?</p>
<p>I'm intentionally asking here rather than in the physics forum, as I'm an M.E. major, and I get the impression that physics majors would think differently about what they need to do to approach the topic of their major properly.</p>
<p>In my personal experience, there is no need for study guides. What you really ought to do is get a solution manual and do lots of practice problems to see where you are struggling then search up help in your textbook, online (Khan Academy is good) or from your professor or TA during office hours. his has been very successful for me.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with practicing. Once you understand all the rules and formulas, you need to familiarize yourself with every type of problem possible. It’s like studying for math.</p>
<p>Personally, I didn’t use the textbook for practice at all (I just read it, understood it, and looked over the examples in the chapter) because there are like 100 problems per chapter… I basically got my hands on any and all exams from previous years (not sure if those are available to you, but professors usually post 2) and did those. And then right before the test I would go over all of them again. More likely than not, your exams will be similar from year to year. And even if they’re not all exactly the same types of problems, at least you’ll get MOST of the questions right. ;)</p>
<p>Depending on the type of exam questions that your professor writes, Masteringphysics is usually not that helpful, especially the problems where all you enter are variables and symbols. Don’t waste time redoing homework problems unless you know for a fact the questions your prof writes are very similar to hw problems!</p>
<p>As for study aids, I watched a few Youtube videos. But those were for understanding purposes only. Like if I still didn’t understand a concept after reading the book, I would try to search for it in Youtube (you could also Google it but it’s easier for someone to feed you the info in a video lol). Khan Academy helped to a degree, but I feel like his videos are generally very basic and may not answer specific questions.</p>
<p>I really hope this helped!</p>