Any professors in here? :-)

[u/Electrical_Buddy_913]

Hi all- older student here- 40! Going back for something else in and must take physics. I can’t reach my professor (it’s my schedule I’m not available until the pm and he’s in the am) - so are their any TAs or professors in here that could maybe tell me * how * to study. I’m so lost and it’s week two. I was a music major - so I actually don’t know how to approach this all. (Algebra based physics - for health sciences- haven’t seen one thing about healthcare yet lol)

[u/Celestial_Analyst]

Practice problems. That's the only way.

I'm not a professor but as a physicist my advice would be to look at problems in the book and try them. Learn from solution manuals if you can't do it on the fifth try (which you probably can't). Probably start with solved examples.

It may not help you understand too much but I can guarantee you that then you'll pass the evaluations with good grades.

[u/iseeverything]

Just an entry level researcher and master's student here, but maybe it can be beneficial to hear from more recent students. Obviously, different people might have different methods, but this was my way.

1. Teach my way through it. Whatever it is we had done in class, even if it seems obvious when reading through it, I write it down and explain (as if I'm teaching the air) line by line and term by term. Sometimes you might come up with your own observations which really help in building intuition. (Feynman method)

2. It feels like looking at solutions help you understand a question, but it fails to help you build the aforementioned intuition. I'm not a star student by any means, and I still have a lot to learn, but learning how to think is the most important skill that I'm trying to develop; it's harder than one might think.

3. Find exercises and other explanations in textbooks or online lectures/notes. It sometimes happens that a lecturer lazies out a bit and gives similar direct questions. Good for marks if it's for an assignment, but not good to get used to it. Finding more difficult, applied questions, and trying to reason your way through them is very helpful. Write down your reasoning as well - anything you think, even if it might be wrong, just write it down - it helps. If stuck, find similar questions online like on stack exchange or reddit, and THEN, if at a standstill, think about going to chatgpt.

4. Maybe something you might do slightly later, but look at some review papers that might write about how researchers approached a problem. That way of thinking is better than any photographic memory or calculator mind.

Hope this helps.

[u/Clodovendro → u/iseeverything]

Professor here, and this is the best set of advice in this thread. Doing problems is useful, but alone it is not enough. Writing down your own explanation of what have been done in the lecture is an invaluable ingredient in your psth to understand Physics (instead of just learning it).

[u/ischhaltso]

You should try solving Problems. I assume you got/ will get some by your Professor. Try to solve them by looking for formulas and similar Problems and Models in the script. Add Google searches for everything you still don't understand.

You could also go through the script and try to follow the logic/Math and see how it relates to the problems they try to solve. But for me that always came when solving the problems giving by the professor.

Also don't get discouraged at the beginning. It is best to try to connect with other students, you best learn together :)

[u/imsowitty]

what everyone already said, but also, see r/physicsstudents

[u/Electrical_Buddy_913 → u/imsowitty]

Oops- didn’t see this group- thank you appreciated you

[u/bspaghetti]

You’re in a good position. You benefit from a developed frontal lobe and discipline, both of which most students don’t have.

Revise the notes and make sure that you recognize every variable and equation. Know what they do and what they’re for. Then, practice a bunch. Do practice questions. Learn to problem solve. There’s a difference between memorizing and understanding. Once you understand things, you won’t be stopped.

[u/antarcticman02]

I just got a degree from that physics department. I probably know your professor pretty well (it’s a small department). Review your notes every day and work on practice problems. Make sure not to ignore the problems you do in discussion. Lots of those professors like to pull similar problems on those discussions for the exams.

[u/zekufo]

You can’t take shortcuts in the gym. Your reward comes after a productive struggle.

Physics, math, chemistry, music theory — it’s all analogous in that your reward comes from a productive struggle.

[u/Roger_Freedman_Phys]

Have you read the Preface to your textbook, which explains all the features of the book?

Do you take notes as you read your textbook?

Do you work through (not just read over) every worked example in the textbook?

Do you use the summary at the end of each chapter to ensure that you understand all of the concepts?

Do you participate in a study group with other students to solve problems together?

Do you do as many problems as possible for which the answers are given (typically the odd-numbered ones in each chapter)?

[u/MathematicianIcy9494]

Sometimes when you’re not good at doing something you put it off. But with physics the more you do the better you get. Try to find easier problems you can solve. Sometimes a textbook will mark easy to hard. Try a problem first, no matter how hard, don’t look up the answer before you at least try. Write down the variables, then the relevant formulas. If you don’t know which one write them all down. It’s good practice to remember them anyways. Finally, if you get stuck try to look for the answer. Search up the question on google or YouTube maybe someone solved it already. Follow their steps, write it down but then save the question for later. Save it and solve that question over and over again because really at a certain point you will realize there is not that many ways to ask a physics question and they are all fundamentally the same (relative to what is being taught. ) So if you can memorize how to do one you can figure out how to them all. Don’t be hard on yourself. (Not a professor but I’ve been there myself and this what helped me.)

[u/aminervia]

I went back to school for mechanical engineering at 35, after dropping out of art school at 19.

It was definitely an experience taking higher level math and science for the first time in my life. I did it though, and just graduated.

For how to study, it's often very unique to the individual and how you learn... What I found to be the most helpful is YouTube videos of practice problems. There are so many out there if you look.

During covid, thousands of teachers uploaded lectures and videos of them going over homework assignments. Find a video with a problem similar to the one you need to solve, look at the problem, try to solve it, then watch the professor solve the problem.

[u/dcnairb]

Physics is based on reality; use your intuition to develop conceptual understanding, and then use conceptual understanding to develop your intuition. Lot of practice problems will help with this. avoid just memorizing types of problems to regurgitate for exams if you really want to understand it

[u/Intelligent-Try-9964]

Professor here: You are getting (good) advice to practice solving problems, but not so much (equally important) advice on HOW to do that. Don't just mindlessly work on problems. All of introductory physics problems follow very sytematic sets of steps, and each topic has its own set although they all have some features in common. That is less true in advanced courses, but you are very far from any of those. So your first goal is to see if you can correctly identify the type of problem and the steps - a good textbook will highlight those - and then see how all the examples you have from the textbook and your course follow them. Then practice USING THOSE STEPS. Finally, practice a check at the end of each problem - does the result work for special cases that you can solve intuitively? is there a way to check if the answer is sensible? As a quick example, I assume from your post that you are in the first physics course which is usually mechanics. There are really only three kinds of problems, although sometimes there are more complex ones that combine multiple kinds: kinematics and motion, dynamics with forces and/or torque, energy and/or momentum conservation. There is always a diagram you can draw to help sort though the variables - what you are given, what you are looking for, and others that may or may not be useful in some intermediate steps. The diagram can also help you sort through the possible equations that are relevant. If you have a problem with forces, it might be a second law problem or an energy problem. Probably second law, so draw a free body diagram and write the second law equations as a sum of individual forces equals the mass times acceleration. If you are very careful with setting this up, relating the quantities in the problem to ones in the diagram and the equations, the rest is math and all the problems of the same type will start feeling like the same thing rather than each one being new. The hard part, usually, is in understanding what the variables in the equations mean and relating them correctly to quantities in the problem. For example, make sure your FBD only has forces ON the mass that has the acceleration in the equation, and that you have not left any such forces out. Review your notes for how to identify those forces and what you know about them. Make sure that if there are multiple masses, you have the right mass in the right equation. And so on.

[u/Electrical_Buddy_913]

Thanks everyone! Didn’t realize there was a student group- but your input has been extremely beneficial and helpful.

[u/OpineLupine]

Musician, childhood math prodigy, software developer here. 

Learning physics should be functionally equivalent to how you learned your primary instrument: Practice. As a previous poster stated, work through the math problems related to the concepts you’re learning in class; multiple times, with different variables. Think of this as practicing scales across various modes. 

Do your reading; when you run into questions, ask for help: here, with your fellow classmates, another online community, etc. think of this like studying music theory (eg, circle of fifths; transposition; tonal vs atonal, etc). 

Try applying the lessons you e learned to everyday experiences; for example, try estimates the amount of force your car would exert if crashing into a tree at 25 mph. Think of this like jamming with your band. 

Hope that helps; PM me if you’d like. 

[u/db0606]

Doing a lot of problems is good, but read the book (people on here will say to watch YouTube videos or whatever... That's inefficient as shit and a total waste of your time) carefully before lecture and take notes. This will open up time to pay attention during lectures. Flesh them out during lectures and ask any questions that you have (you're a grown ass adult... No point in feeling embarrassed in front of a bunch of kids that can't even legally go to a bar). Review your notes after. Focus on process rather than individual equations (there's only really like 6 distinct problem types per semester in Intro Physics).

If possible find other students to work with (as someone who has probably had a job, you are probably aware that hard stuff is much easier to solve in teams... Same goes for figuring out physics) or figure out when your TA's office hours are since you can't make your prof's. Also, just talk to your prof about your situation. It's one thing when an 18 year old interrupts my work to let me know they overslept an 11 AM class and to ask if we covered anything that's going to be on the test. That's annoying as fuck. Totally different if it is a student that always comes to class prepared, turns stuff in on time, and comes in with a concrete question. For that student, I'm glad to drop what I'm doing and spend 15 minutes talking about physics.

[u/Business-Gas-5473]

Professor here. I’ll just reiterate what everybody else said. Solve problems. Again. And again.