<p>I have Deweese as my instructor and i've never taken physics but i've taken up to calculus 2 and i LOVE math.</p>
<p>work smart, not hard</p>
<p>mastering physics is useless so don’t make it one of your main resources</p>
<p>labs are useless but work hard on them because the points add up</p>
<p>it depends on your GSI but usually discussion is useless</p>
<p>overall, it’s a class where you wont be spoon-fed any information. learn the information and master it on your own.</p>
<p>Physics is about figuring stuff out before you get to the math. It’s like planning stuff out before executing the plan; from the teachers I’ve taken, the calculations were never too important (maybe worth 1-4 points out of 25? I’ve received 22-23 out of 25 despite having a wrong answer but correct work shown).
And for 8A/B, this is what physics is all about really: how to solve the ******* problem (in fact, that’s what my 8B GSI over the summer said…he added that while the course is supposed to teach you physics, it’s geared more towards solving problems in general.)</p>
<p>I agree with the above though. MP is fairly useless and serves to frustrate kids (btw how much does it cost? I’m trying to sell my unopened code??). Who you get as a GSI is very important as well. I had a terrible, foreign GSI teaching my section for the first time in English when I was in 8A. But for 8B, I had probably the best GSI I’ve ever had at this school and I learned a lot during disc and lab.</p>
<p>MP can be extraordinarily picky and inconsistent about precision and rounding. Three problems in a row where it follows solid math rules to determine where to round, then you get one that doesn’t match. Throw in an odd problem or two where no amount of rounding or alternative forms of the important conversion factors and constants will reproduce the ‘correct’ answer precisely. As if it weren’t enough to figure out how to approach the situation to solve it or to work out the correct equations and do the math, you also have spots where you have to guess how they will do the calculation if you want to get max points on the homework.</p>
<p>MP costs 88 as a pack with the work book, 55 without. </p>
<p>Any more tips?</p>
<p>well probably too late but i could sell the code for cheaper</p>
<p>I studied exclusively from mastering physics for 8A actually haha. </p>
<p>Bad professor and GSI so I didn’t go to lecture and skipped discussion a lot… I just did a lot of problems before the midterms, got an A :)</p>
<p>Do tons and tons of practice problems (yes, that includes mastering physics). It really helps to have a good GSI. If yours isn’t helping you enough, find one at office hours that is better, and go. Do all the review session problems, do problems in the book, etc.</p>
<p>Just a tip about the cheat-sheet…Use <5% of it to squeeze in formulas. Use the remaining 95% to write examples or key problems which contain a lot of the main concepts. I found that to be very helpful during exams, especially when a problem popped up that was similar to one I had written down.</p>
<p>A love of math will probably help you more in 8B than 8A. 8A generally doesn’t get too into that. It focuses more on conceptualizing certain things. Good luck!</p>
<p>DERIVING AND COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDING ALL THE EQUATIONS + Completely understanding the sample problems = best way to study for physics. Then you do practice problems just for review. I got really high scores on all my tests in 8a/8b doing this.</p>
<p>^
how ^_^</p>