Which concepts are the hardest to grasp in Non-Calc Gen Physics

[Dr Wannabee]

Math has never been one of my strengths. My only B so far was in College Algebra so I'm just trying to get some sort of idea of what I'm in for.

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[Flopotomist]

The hardest concept for me to grasp was the concept that all these darn circuits were somehow remotely relevant to my desire to be a physician.

 

[Noway]

which part of physics did you have circuits in? I have only take the first part and didnt have anything like that. Anyway, physics was my only C last semester. def. my least favorite class. cant wait for the second semester

 

[Flopotomist]

I actually really like the first semester of physics - I took cal. based physics (and i am horrible at math, so thought I was going to totally bomb) but the professor was AWESOME, and kept the class super interesting. I had a great study group, and pulled an A in it. The second semester wasn't so grand (circuits ugg snore) and with an 89.4 I got a B and was pretty steamed about it.

My best peice of advice - get a study group and work lots of problems. There are only so many questions that can be asked about each section, so practicing lots insures that you will have seen a similar problem when you have a toughy on test day.

 

[DrBowtie]

Physics II overall is the harder since you are dealing with a lot of principles that can't be readily observed like gravity or other newtonian mechanics.

 

[Noway]

yeah, i need to find a good group of people for 2nd semester. i always thought i could process the material, but when test day came around i really lost it and just couldn't remeber everything. I know i was really close to getting a B though. oh well

 

[gujuDoc]

Physics II overall is the harder since you are dealing with a lot of principles that can't be readily observed like gravity or other newtonian mechanics.

I found Physics 2 easier to understand, with the exception of some right hand rule and other magnetism issues.

 

[MoosePilot]

Circuits are pretty darn tough. Lenses can be difficult to memorize the equations for.

 

[Noway]

i wonder if most people find gen. physics or gen. chemistry harder?

 

[DrBowtie]

I found Physics 2 easier to understand, with the exception of some right hand rule and other magnetism issues.

From my tutoring experience, you are not in the majority.
Ah...the right hand rule...confusing since there are two ways to teach it. I wish they would just standardize it.

 

[MoosePilot]

i wonder if most people find gen. physics or gen. chemistry harder?

I found general chemistry much harder. I took non-calc physics and it was a relatively easy A. I "get" physics pretty well, though.

 

[Noway]

i guess its good that i find chem easier since i only have one semester of physics left and god knows how many more chem classes.

 

[riceman04]

for me it was magnetics

 

[newguy357]

No offense, but "non-calc general physics" should be easy for anyone who aspires to be a physician. It's easy. Don't be intimidated by the word 'physics', like so many pre-med people seem to be. Just think about the physical concepts intuitively.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

I was a physics major, but I do have some idea of what makes physics hard. It isn't so much the math (although it's that too). The main problem is that physics is often counterintuitive, but requires you to draw conclusions using a sort of cautious mathematical/physical intuition.

For example, intuitively, we think that heavier objects fall faster. But the physics says otherwise. Also, say you are pushing a heavy stone block on a frictionless surface. Physics tells us that an effortless touch can send the object sliding off, hell, if there is no friction, we could slide objects that were thousands of tons in weight. But our intuition tells us otherwise.

I think ultimately that the main difficulty of physics is disentangling the essential, conservative forces that are taught in elementary physics, from the nonconservative forces such as drag and friction which are responsible for so much that we observe in the natural world, and that, in part, inform our intuition.

 

[DrBowtie]

mercaptovizadeh, you bring up a very good point.
The physics you learn in these general physics classes is so simplified and idealized that you would never encounter the same conditions in real life.

 

[AxlxA]

Circuits was the EASIEST part of physics 2.

The hardest is electromagnetic fields.

Remember those "gausian surfaces of some charge will always be the same no matter what surfaces u look at....." that stuff i never really understood but oh well i got an A.

 

[Noway]

No offense, but "non-calc general physics" should be easy for anyone who aspires to be a physician. It's easy. Don't be intimidated by the word 'physics', like so many pre-med people seem to be. Just think about the physical concepts intuitively.

some people are better at other things. not everyone is going to ace physics

 

[nightowl]

honestly, I had much more trouble with first semester. Newtonian physics for me was much harder than electricity, magnetism, and optics. I think my biggest problem was learning to think in terms of physics. That initial hurdle was the hardest part. You have to go into class with your brain as a blank slate and let the equations and rules shape how you think about the subject. For me, only until I had the equations down and understood the concepts could I start really "working" problems. And usually there's not much to grasp, you just have to be sure to know it. Like Newton's 3 laws, vectors, conservation of momentum. You won't forget these concepts after test, because you will use them over and over and over again. It's cool though, because unlike gen chem (which I hated much more than physics) once you know the stuff you'll apply it to everyday life. Or myabe I'm just a huge dork

 

[gujuDoc]

honestly, I had much more trouble with first semester. Newtonian physics for me was much harder than electricity, magnetism, and optics. I think my biggest problem was learning to think in terms of physics. That initial hurdle was the hardest part. You have to go into class with your brain as a blank slate and let the equations and rules shape how you think about the subject. For me, only until I had the equations down and understood the concepts could I start really "working" problems. And usually there's not much to grasp, you just have to be sure to know it. Like Newton's 3 laws, vectors, conservation of momentum. You won't forget these concepts after test, because you will use them over and over and over again. It's cool though, because unlike gen chem (which I hated much more than physics) once you know the stuff you'll apply it to everyday life. Or myabe I'm just a huge dork

I agree with what you said. I think my problem with Physics is that I had a really horrible teacher. When you went to him in office hours to try to understand anything, he basically insulted you to your face and refused to help you because he was to busy playing on his calculator.

He refused to help anyone but the top students who didn't really need help anyways or the people who sucked up to him because they had his wife as a highschool teacher. it was really unnerving. The physics professor they got after his term I've heard is much better and is who I wish I had now.

I never truly understood physics until I opened TPR Physical science review book, and they explained it very plain and clear, and until I understood the calculus behind how they derived and integrated all the formulas. It made much more sense to me after that. Wish I had a combination of those two concepts prior to going into physics. I also wish I took calc based physics instead because it would have made more sense then algebra based physics.

 

[Law2Doc]

Math has never been one of my strengths. My only B so far was in College Algebra so I'm just trying to get some sort of idea of what I'm in for.

Speaking as someone else who wasn't a math guy (although I did somehow manage to squeak through calculus at significant cost to my BCPM), the hardest part of non-calculus physics for me was the non-calculus math. You will need to use significant amounts of trig to solve those slanted surface type vector problems, which is fine in calculating each single vector, but when you start combining multivariable equations, you have to be really comfortable with sins and cosines and tangents and what you get when you combine these things into a single fraction. For someone good at math that's cake, but for non math people it's not.

 

[Avalanche21]

Speaking as someone else who wasn't a math guy (although I did somehow manage to squeak through calculus at significant cost to my BCPM), the hardest part of non-calculus physics for me was the non-calculus math. You will need to use significant amounts of trig to solve those slanted surface type vector problems, which is fine in calculating each single vector, but when you start combining multivariable equations, you have to be really comfortable with sins and cosines and tangents and what you get when you combine these things into a single fraction. For someone good at math that's cake, but for non math people it's not.

See, I like math. I've never gotten anything but an A in math (not trying to troll, I swear), and I think calc-based is easier (I took trig based in high school). All those angles and trigonometric functions mess with my head.

 

[Masamune4567]

for me it was magnetics

F = qvxB = IlxB

v = E/B

qvb = mv^2/r

There you go

 

[stifler]

i dont full understand newton's 2nd and 3rd law. i can do problems, but idk wtf is going on. anyways im taking calc based and its hard as hell. gen chem was a breeze for me. im struggling to keep afloat in physics.

im doing well in my summer course, but i dont think im actually learning much. so i might audit it at another college some other time. but physics is REALLY difficult for me.

 

[Masamune4567]

i dont full understand newton's 2nd and 3rd law. i can do problems, but idk wtf is going on. anyways im taking calc based and its hard as hell. gen chem was a breeze for me. im struggling to keep afloat in physics.

im doing well in my summer course, but i dont think im actually learning much. so i might audit it at another college some other time. but physics is REALLY difficult for me.

newton 2nd law: F = ma

netwon 3rd law: F bonc = -Fconb

 

[abraxas]

the hardest concept i had was staying awake, stupid boring professor schedualing class at 8 in the morning..

 

[jjjj2]

Physics is your phriend.

 

[45408]

the hardest concept i had was staying awake, stupid boring professor schedualing class at 8 in the morning..

mine was at the same awful time, but my professor was awesome. He made things so easy to understand (although his problems were anything but easy!)

physics was my best class - things just clicked - but magnetics and circuits were still tough

 

[abraxas]

mine was at the same awful time, but my professor was awesome. He made things so easy to understand (although his problems were anything but easy!)

physics was my best class - things just clicked - but magnetics and circuits were still tough

my professor was sooooo boring we seriously spent the whole lecture doing 2-3 practice problems and that was it, how these problems took 50 minutes i have no idea... But his grading system was nice no big test only biweekly quizes made remember stuff way to easy.

 

[Shredder]

gauss law, flux, webers, spherical charged surfaces. i found this all hard, but it was back in high school. the rest was easy. mechanics definitely easier than electricity and magnetism, especially with no calculus, what a breeze

 

[tacrum43]

Physics II overall is the harder since you are dealing with a lot of principles that can't be readily observed like gravity or other newtonian mechanics.

I agree. I thought that the engine cycle (with the power stroke and stuff) was the hardest concept.

I still don't understand Bernoulli's Principle. I know how to use the equation, but I don't understand why it works that way.

I liked the circuits part though .