<p>Wazzapnin'. :cool: </p>
<p>Where should you begin is you are looking to qualify for the USPhO? How difficult is the test? Any books that you recommend?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
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Where should you begin is you are looking to qualify for the USPhO?
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<p>Where should you begin if you are looking to qualify for the USPhO? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Lucky bastard. You got CC to help you out...I didnt know about this until last year...</p>
<p>The screening exam became tougher, despite what they might tell you. Sure, it was just mechanics, but...it completely owned me and I'm the best in my Mechanics class. I got maybe a 47 or so outta 100, so maybe I really only missed the cut off by a few points, who knows? However, I didn't know the last 3 chapters of the curriculum that well (equilibrium, gravitation, and SHM) back then....maybe I coulda made it now...</p>
<p>Halliday and Resnick is the way to go.</p>
<p>According to my physics teacher, they were supposed to make it easier this year, but then they didn't. For the last half-hour of the test I just drew pictures because I had done all I could possibly do. I think the cut-off was around 80 this year.</p>
<p>LOL! I missed that by 30 points...</p>
<p>But then again, looking back at some of those problems (multiple choice without work wasn't hard), I could have done most of the free response if I knew what I know now...</p>
<p>Yes, use the book by Halliday Resnick and Walker.</p>
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Where should you begin
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<p>Mechanics.</p>
<p>But the test seems to change radically from year to year, so be prepared for anything. Last year there was no mechanics on the multiple choice (it was all relativity and stuff like that) but the free-response was four mechanics questions. This year basically the whole test was mechanics. Of course just because it's mechanics doesn't mean it's easy -- I qualified last year, but not this year. (It didn't help that I hadn't studied mechanics for a year or so.)</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I'll advocate for University Physics by Young and Freedman.</p>
<p>Anynone know about the 8th edition of Halliday? Is it different from the 7th?</p>
<p>I have Tipler, just wanted to know if I should buy something else.</p>
<p>I have both Tipler and Halliday. I like both of them, but Halliday a little more. Their explantions tend to be better but Tipler has some great sample problems.</p>
<p>serway and jewett isn't bad either. i used it for the prelim and semifinal both years i made the us physics team. just keep in mind that you have to know some other stuff for the semifinal that isn't really contained in any of these intro books. </p>
<p>also, as a heads up, the usapho is going to change pretty radically next year. last i heard, they're probably going to move to a 3-test system like the AMC series of contests, so your mileage may vary.</p>
<p>(by the way, i'm representing the united states at ipho this year. feel free to ask questions. i definitely know how things work :P)</p>
<p>EDIT: also, you people who say the prelim got harder: what? it was downright silly compared to last year's exam!</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. What other stuff do you need to know, iostream?</p>
<p>actually some of this may be contained in intro books, but if your version is a truncated one or only covers physics c stuff, you'll have to look elsewhere. most notably, in addition to everything in physics C mechanics and e+m, you should know:</p>
<p>calculus-based thermodynamics (in addition to the basic results, know things about adiabatic processes, differential definitions of stuff like entropy, etc.)</p>
<p>special relativity (in addition to the basics, it's nice to know the lorentz transform, 4-vectors/invariants, etc. but not required.)</p>
<p>basic results of quantum mechanics (L is quantized, bohr model, photoelectric effect, electron diffraction, compton effect, de Broglie wavelength, stefan-boltzmann law, etc.)</p>
<p>nuclear physics stuff</p>
<p>fluids/hydromechanics</p>
<p>waves (single slit/double slit/N-slit diffraction, huygens' principle, thin-film interference, cavity resonance, properties of electromagnetic waves, etc.)</p>
<p>alternating-current circuit stuff (more of a camp topic, but still good to know something for the exams)</p>
<p>in any case, focus on knowing mechanics and e+m really well before anything else. those are the most important.</p>
<p>also, keep in mind that the olympiad syllabus is not that long and daunting. this is a problem solving competition more than anything else, so don't focus so much on memorizing stuff. doing practice problems and the like is more important.</p>
<p>god damn it, I wish I was younger now (this test looks so damn fun - and public education socialized me into thinking that you can only learn it from a class).</p>
<p>Thanks iostream. I think my Tipler book has that stuff. Basically it's just all of the Physics B stuff included w/ calculus? Do you need to have taken any university level courses to do well? Also, how essential is it to do practice problems from texts?</p>
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Do you need to have taken any university level courses to do well?
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<p>No you don't - self-study is more important. A lot of people get into USPhO with mere HS courses - they just do problems on their own time</p>
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Also, how essential is it to do practice problems from texts?
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<p>That is the most important way to prepare. You don't learn physics through lectures. You learn through problem-solving.</p>
<p>yeah, (physics b + calculus) + physics c is probably a pretty decent summary.</p>
<p>as for the other stuff, inquilinekea basically hit the nail on the head. you don't need intense college-level coursework -- i certainly didn't have that. just get practice hands on. do the hardest problems in your text. after you do that, i recommend buying the CD of old exams listed on the aapt website and doing them; first, just try and get through a few exams, then start timing yourself. if you get really good (or don't want to buy a CD), try some old iphos, which are freely available online -- be aware that going straight from textbook to ipho-level problems is one hell of a learning curve. read harder university-level physics textbooks and do problems from there (for example, chapter 12 of "introduction to electrodynamics" by griffiths -- a textbook normally used in junior or senior electrodynamics courses -- has the clearest explanation of special relativity i've ever read.) get practice however you can.</p>
<p>also, the more physics you know, the better, even if it isn't directly related to the olympiad. you can sometimes see deep connections to stuff that makes problems a lot easier. for example, i discovered a very simple, elegant solution to a quantum mechanics problem from an old ipho that utilized the fact that electromagnetic interactions are time-reversal invariant -- something that you'd never come across if you didn't read random physics stuff for fun. without this observation, the problem takes three times as long and requires a heck of a lot more algebra.</p>
<p>like i said before, the list of topics covered on the olympiad is NOT long at all. the physics olympiad is very much like the math olympiad in that you can become very quickly acquainted with everything you techincally need to know, but you need to actually practice in order to learn how to be an effective problem-solver. some of the trickiest problems can be solved with extremely elementary techniques. an especially profound example of this is the theoretical exam from ipho 2003 (taiwan).</p>
<p>just be sure not to get too caught up in the olympiad. math olympiad people will tell you this, computer science olympiad people will tell you this, and i, a physics olympiad participant, am telling you this: contest physics isn't everything. you'll be surprised how much you learn by going through the process, but if you stay focused on the physics and not the contest, you'll come off with something a lot more valuable than the narrow talent of being able to solve three challenging theoretical problems in elementary physics in five hours.</p>
<p>I didn't really take an AP related class, but I did make the Semis this year after studying about a month with Halliday and Resnick. I basically did about every other problem related to Mechanics, since I got the heads-up early on that the test was solely Mech-based. Too bad I couldn't advance to the Team due to citizenship requirements :-(</p>
<p>Thank you for your advice iostream and IK. IPhO, here I come. :cool:</p>
<p>Just got a book, "How to Solve Physics Problems" by R. Oman and D. Oman. :D</p>
<p>off bittorrent?</p>