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小木虫2005

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[交流] 【小木虫原创，禁止转贴】The Way to Study Physics----1

The Way to Study Physics

   You, like many students, may view college level physics as difficult. You, again like many students, may seem overwhelmed by new terms and equations. You may not have had extensive experience with problem-solving and may get lost when trying to apply information from your textbook and classes to an actual physics problem. We hope this pamphlet will help!

   It's designed to help you stay out of the difficulties that come when you think small and get too involved in memorizing formulas or other specific details without understanding the underlying principles. It will guide you in understanding how to apply specific knowledge to the problems, how to start, how to seek help, how to check your answer. In short, it will help you develop the study skills that are important not just in physics but in all of your courses.

Contents

Getting an Overview
Effective Participation in a Physics Class
Reading Your Physics Textbook
Problem Solving in Physics
Examples of the Application of the Problem-Solving Principles
Effective Test Preparation
Weekly Flow Chart for Studying Physics
Tips

Getting an Overview

   It's important to recognize that physics is a problem-solving discipline. Your physics teacher will stress major themes and principles, and one major goal is that you, the student, will be able to apply these principles to understand and solve problems. You should focus on this fact, that in a physics course, you are expected to solve problems.
   An overview of your course can help you organize your efforts and increase your efficiency. To understand and retain data or formulas, you should see the underlying principles and connecting themes. It is almost inevitable that you will sometimes forget a formula, and an understanding of the underlying principle can help you generate the formula for yourself.
   Take these steps to getting an overview early in the term so that all subsequent material can be integrated into your overview:
1. Examine the course outline (first day handout or syllabus) carefully, and read the official description of the course in the University Catalog. Look for underlying themes or a pattern on which the course is developed and how this course fits in with your other courses.
2. Preview the textbook:
A. Read the introduction and table of contents.
B. Read any notes to the student (or teacher) that are included and the preface.
C. Check the course outline to see what chapters are assigned and which are omitted. If they are not assigned in the same order as in the table of contents, can you see a reason for your teacher's decision to alter the order of presentation?
3. As you preview the course from this perspective early in the term, look for important themes and principles. Glance at some of the problems. How are important themes illustrated in these problems?

Effective Participation in a Physics Class

   It's important that you be well prepared for class in order to use its potential fully for integrating the course material. To prepare for the class, you should do the following:
Prior to each class:
1. Check the course outline or reading assignment to see what will be covered. Prepare by briefly previewing the sections of the textbook that apply to the subjects to be covered. This preview will improve your ability to follow the class, for you will have seen the new terminology and will recognize signposts that will help integrate the classes into an overall picture.
2. Read the introduction and the summary of the relevant chapter and look at the section headings and subheadings. Try to formulate questions in your mind about the subjects to be covered. This question-formulating helps you manipulate and therefore better understand the material.
3. Examine the drawings and pictures. Try to determine what principles they illustrate.
4. Make notes of new words, new units of measure, statements of general laws, and other new concepts.
5. Do not underline or highlight the text, since you do not yet know what will be emphasized by the instructor.
6. Right before the beginning of class, check your notes from the last class. Reading your notes will prepare you to listen to the new physics class as part of an integrated course and will help you to see the broad development of themes.

----During class:

Come to the class on time and stay till the very end. Often teachers give helpful hints in the first and last minutes of the lecture. Unfortunately, these times are when a lot of people are not listening.
1. Take good notes. It's helpful to draw up a set of abbreviations and use them consistently in taking notes. Keep a list of them for later reference. Leave ample margins for later comments and for questions or write on only one side so that you can use the opposite side for comments and questions (see After Class, below).
2. When you copy drawings, completeness is worth more than careful artwork. You should not only copy what is on the board but also record important points that the teacher makes orally about the diagram.
3. If you get behind in your note-taking, leave a space in your notes and go on. You can fill in your notes later with the help of a classmate or your textbook. (Note: The Learning Skills Center can give you additional information on note-taking.)
4. Ask questions. Don't be embarrassed to ask your teacher questions. Many teachers depend on feedback from students to help them set a proper pace for the class. And of course it can happen that the teacher does not explain a step he or she takes, or even makes a mistake when writing something on the board.

-----After class:

1. Immediately after class, or as soon as possible, review and edit your notes. You need not rewrite them. Rather, you should look for important ideas and relationships among major topics. Summarize these in the margin or on the opposite side if you've taken notes only on one side, and at this time you may want to add an outline to your notes. Also, this would be a good time to integrate notes from your textbook into your lecture notes; then you will have one set of integrated notes to study by.
2. As you review your notes, certain questions may come to mind. Leave space for recording questions, and then either ask the teacher or even better, try to answer these questions for yourself with your friends and with the help of the text.

To be continued.

[ Last edited by 小木虫2005 on 2005-10-16 at 09:50 ]

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小木虫2005

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【小木虫原创，禁止转贴】The Way to Study Physics----2

Reading Your Physics Textbook

   Reading the text and solving homework problems is a cycle: Questions lead to answers that lead back to more questions. An entire chapter will often be devoted to the consequences of a single basic principle. You should look for these basic principles. These Laws of Nature give order to the physicists' view of the universe. Moreover, nearly all of the problems that you will be faced with in a physics course can be analyzed by means of one or more of these laws.
      When looking for relationships among topics, you may note that in many instances a specific problem is first analyzed in great detail. Then the setting of the problem is generalized into more abstract results. When such generalizations are made, you should refer back to the case that was previously cited and make sure that you understand how the general theory applies to the specific problem. Then see if you can think of other problems
to which that general principle applies. Some suggestions for your physics reading:
1. Make use of the preview that you did prior to the class. Again, quickly look at the major points of the chapter. Think back to the points stressed in class and any questions you might have written down.
2. Read the homework problems first. If specific homework problems have not yet been assigned, select several and look these over. Critically assess what principles seem to be most significant in the assigned chapter. Based upon your brief review of the class and your examination of the problems, try to generate questions in your mind that you want the chapter to answer.
3. Read actively with questions in mind. A passive approach to reading physics wastes your time. Read with a pencil and paper beside the book to jot down questions and notes. If you find that you are not reading actively, once again take a look at the problems and the lecture notes. Read to learn, not to cover material.
4. Stop periodically and pointedly recall the material that you have read. It is a good idea to repeat material aloud and especially to add notes from the textbook into the margins of your class notes.
5. During your reading you will notice sections, equations, or ideas that apply directly to assigned problems. After you have read such a section, stop and analyze its application to a homework problem. The interplay of reading and problem solving is part of the cycle of question --> answer --> question. It helps you gain insights that are not possible by reading alone, even careful reading alone. Passive reading is simply following the chain of thought in the text. Active reading also involves exploring the possibilities of what is being read. By actively combining the questions that are inherent in problem solving with your reading, you enhance both your concentration while reading and your ability to recall and to apply the material.

Problem Solving in Physics

   You may now be like many students a novice problem solver. The goal of this section is to help you become an expert problem solver. Effective, expert problem solving involves answering five questions:
* What's the problem about?
* What am I asked to find?
* What information am I to use? What principles apply?
* What do I know about similar situations?
* How can I go about applying the information to solve the problem?
* Does my solution make sense?
      You, the expert, will decide, "this is an energy problem," or, "this is a Newton 2 problem." A novice is more likely to decide, "this is a pulley problem," or, "this is a baseball problem." The novice concentrates on the surface features of the problem while you concentrate on the underlying principle. You, an expert problem solver, will answer these questions, play around (briefly) with the problem, and make drawings and sketches (either
in your mind, or even better, on paper) before writing down formulas and plugging in numbers. A novice problem solver, on the other hand, will try to write down equations and plug in numbers as soon as possible. A novice will make many more mistakes than you will when you become an expert.
   In a physics course it's important to remember a couple of things about physicists and physics professors:
   * A physicist seeks those problems that can be modeled or represented by a picture or diagram. Almost any problem you encounter in a physics course can be described with a drawing. Such a drawing often contains or suggests the solution to the problem.
   * A physicist seeks to find unifying principles that can be expressed mathematically and that can be applied to broad classes of physical situations. Your physics text book contains many specific formulas, but you must understand the broader Laws of Nature in order to grasp the general overview of physics. This broad understanding is vital if you are to solve problems that may include several different principles and that may use several different formulas. Virtually all specific formulas in physics are combinations of basic laws.
General outline of how to approach a physics problem:
3. Read the problem. Look up the meanings of any terms that you do not know. Answer for yourself the question, "What's this about?" Make sure you understand what is being asked, what the question is. It is very helpful if you reexpress the problem in your own words or if you tell a friend what the problem is about.
4. Make a drawing of the problem. Even a poor drawing can be helpful, but for a truly good drawing include the following:
A. Give a title that identifies the quantity you are seeking in the problem or that describes the problem.
B. Label the drawing, including the parameters or variables on which the solution depends and that are given in the problem. Write down the given values of these parameters on the drawing.
C. Label any unknown parameters that must be calculated along the way or obtained from the text in order to find the desired solution.
D. Always give the units of measure for all quantities in the problem. If the drawing is a graph, be sure to give both the units and the scale of the axes.
E. Include on the drawing information that is assumed and not given in the problem (such as g, the value of the acceleration due to gravity), and whether air resistance and friction are neglected.
5. Establish which general principle relates the given parameters to the quantity that you are seeking. Usually your picture will suggest the correct techniques and formulas. At times it may be necessary to obtain further information from your textbook or notes before the proper formulas can be chosen. It often happens that further information is needed when the problem has a solution that must be calculated indirectly from the given information. If further information is needed or if intermediate quantities must be computed, it is here that
they are often identified.
6. Draw a second picture that identifies the coordinate system and origin that will be used in elating the data to the equations. In some situations this second picture may be a graph, free body diagram, or vector diagram rather than a picture of a physical situation.
7. Even an expert will often use the concrete method of working a problem. In this method you do the calculation using the given values from the start, so that the algebra gives numerical values at each intermediate step on the way to the final solution. The disadvantage of this method is that because of the large number of numerical calculations involved, mistakes are likely, and so you should take special care with significant figures.

However this method has the advantage that you can see, at every step of the way, how the problem is progressing. It also is more direct and often makes it easier to locate a mistake if you do make one.
8. As an expert, you will more and more use the formal method of working a problem. In this method, you calculate the solution by doing as much as possible without using specific numbers. In other words, do as much of the algebra as you can before substituting the specific given values of the data. In long and complicated problems terms may cancel or expressions simplify. Our advice: gain experience in problem solving by substituting the numbers when you start physics, but gradually adopt the formal approach as you become more confident; many people adopt a compromise approach where they substitute some values but retain others as symbols (for example, "g" for the acceleration due to gravity).
9. Criticize your solution: Ask yourself, "Does it make sense?" Compare your solution to any available examples or to previous problems you have done. Often you can check yourself by doing an approximate calculation. Many times a calculation error will result in an answer that is obviously wrong. Be sure to check the units of your solution to see that they are appropriate. This examination will develop your physical intuition about the correctness of
solutions, and this intuition will be very valuable for later problems and on exams.
An important thing to remember in working physics problems is that by showing all of your work you can much more easily locate and correct mistakes. You will also find it easier to read the problems when you prepare for exams if you show all your work.
10. In an examination, you may have to do problems under a strict time limitation.

Therefore, when you are finished with a homework problem, practice doing it again faster, in order to build up your speed and your confidence.
   When you have completed a problem, you should be able, at some later time, to read the solution and to understand it without referring to the text. You should therefore write up the problem so as to include a description of what is wanted, the principle you have applied, and the steps you have taken. If, when you read your own answer to the problem, you come to a step that you do not understand, then you have either omitted a step that is necessary to the logical development of the solution, or you need to put down more extensive notes in your write-up to remind you of the reasons for each step.
      It takes more time to write careful and complete solutions to homework problems. Writing down what you are doing and thinking slows you down, but more important it makes you behave more like an expert. You will be well paid back by the assurance that you are not overlooking essential information. These careful write-ups will provide excellent review
material for exam preparation.
Examples of the Application of the Problem-Solving Principles

To be continued.

[ Last edited by 小木虫2005 on 2005-10-16 at 09:50 ]