Physics courses are rough.\u00a0 Many say that it is because the material is inherently more challenging, but then it is important to consider that these are lower division courses.\u00a0 For a lower division course, each is only as hard as its curriculum was designed to be.\u00a0 Calculus is hard, but it could be made harder.\u00a0 The same can be said of Chemistry, Biology or any other science.\u00a0 The enlightened individuals who get to decide what students learn in Organic Chemistry could, for example, agree to make it harder if they felt so inclined–it’s not like the subject of Chemistry suddenly stops after you learn about the Diels-Alder reaction (and I’m sure that the notion of making Organic Chemistry more challenging is, to most, beyond the absurd).\u00a0 The difficulty of a course depends on how much material is crammed into a semester’s length of time and the expected level of performance of a student.\u00a0 For Physics, somebody a long time ago decided that these classes would be where undergraduates working through their lower division courses would get knocked over sideways:\u00a0 they would learn how to solve problems at a higher level, increasing amounts of material would be covered in smaller stretches of time, and explanations of ideas and concepts would be brief to ensure that 14 to 16 chapters of very dense material fit nicely into nearly as many weeks.<\/p>\n
There are two paths to take, depending on your major:\u00a0 a two part College Physics<\/em> curriculum for pre-med types that goes to great lengths to avoid using Calculus in its explanations of physical phenomena (which is totally ridiculous given that these same people are also required to take two semesters of Calculus), and a three part Physics for Scientists and Engineers<\/em> series that covers the same material but in greater detail, employing fully unrestrained Mathematics in doing so.\u00a0 It is worth pointing out that, while the latter series is more in depth and thus more challenging, both paths were designed to be very<\/em> difficult.<\/p>\n This was my first Physics class.\u00a0 I had completed three semesters of Chemistry at this point and was expecting the same type of experience, more or less, just applied to a different subject.\u00a0 I was also familiar with the professor, from whom I had already taken two Math courses, so the main components of an academic routine had already fallen into place which I believed could then be applied to this class.\u00a0 The first exam came and went and essentially confirmed these expectations, so I continued through the semester with my approach unchanged.\u00a0 Then, about half way through, I was broadsided by the Physics school bus:\u00a0 an F on an exam for which I believed myself to be adequately prepared.\u00a0 It was a very undesirable shock to my system and greatly damaged my confidence in the subject.\u00a0 I felt that I was understanding the concepts we were covering, but this surprise caused me to question whether I really understood anything.\u00a0 I began to worry that I would not be able to piece the previous material together with the new before it came time to take the next exam.\u00a0 Fortunately I was able to identify that there was a small but very significant problem in my approach to the subject.\u00a0 I subsequently joined my first study group so that I could observe how others were finding their own successes and failures.\u00a0 This worked, and just in the nick of time, as I was able to save the class.\u00a0 Good friends\/classmates were, at the end of the day, the primary reason why I was able to dig myself out of a rather sizable hole.<\/p>\n So while I enjoy the subject of Physics, overall this was not a healthy learning experience.\u00a0 I achieved very positive results in the second and third semesters of this series of classes, but was necessarily wary and paid very close attention to how the material was both structured and presented.\u00a0 In hindsight I believe there to be more than a few serious flaws in the curriculum.\u00a0 Perhaps the most important thing that resulted from Mechanics<\/em> is that I came to understand that Physics is only as hard as somebody else makes it.<\/p>\n – Forthcoming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PHYS4A — Physics Mechanics Physics courses are rough.\u00a0 Many say that it is because the material is inherently more challenging, but then it is important to consider that these are lower division courses.\u00a0 For a lower division course, each is … Continue reading Exams<\/h3>\n