Originally posted by exilio
Hmmm.
Things seem to have gotten more complex. Some of the schools I am looking at like UCSD and UC Berkeley offer onlt calculus based Physics courses.
So that sucks. I'm either being forced into going to a chool with a non calc-based physics course or I am looking at 3 years instead of two when I xfer.
help...
Berkeley's physics 8a/8b series isn't rigorously calc based, and from what I understand, they only really expect you to ba able to follow the logic of the calculus used in the descriptions and derivations, rather than expecting you to use calculus in any serious way. For Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB), which is the standard pre-med major, you are required to take the same calculus that engineers and math majors take their first year; yet the calculus that is a prereq to the physics 8 series is the "calculus for poets" series (math 16) as my ex used to call it. It's only one dimensional, and the only reason they require it at all is probably because it helps you see the trend in equations of motion, as described by Cerberus. No one really checks prereqs at Cal, and I bet that the physics 8 professors know that most of their students abhor and fear calc, so I don't think you need to be too worried. I'd wager that you could probably take math 16 and phys 8a concurrently, and be fine in both--it certainly would be less of a challenge than your firts year of med school promises to be.
I can also say that I took precalc at a JC without ever taking trig--not even in HS--and I got a solid A in that class, despite being a C-/D- student in my Algebra II in the 12th grade. Unless you know the system will reject your attempts to enroll without a prereq, I would ignore the prereq. And if they do have prereq checking software, I'd talk to the teacher about getting an add code, and if you explain your situation, they'll likely be happy to work with you. Premeds are harder working than the average student from which prereqs are implemented in the first place.
Lots of people will talk about the uselessness of calculus, but I for one feel that trig is far more useless than calc. pre-calc will give you the necessary introduction to trig, but there really isn't much point in taking a class that is about trig manipulations and memorizing identity functions and crap when you will seldom need that learning later. I'm an engineering major and I've never been at any disadvantage for not having trig, so I doubt you will find yourself wanting it.
Skip trig, take precalc over the summer, and then go on to physics.