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GENERAL
ADVICE ON PHYSICS 117
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TIMING is one key to mastering Physics 117
efficiently: Doing each job earlier pays off much better than doing it
later. |
| Read
the text BEFORE the lecture,
and note any parts which you find hard to understand. Then look for clarification when the topic comes up in lecture.
And if you don't get the clarification you need, ask about your trouble
points, |
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Do
the problems BEFORE you look
at the solutions. Do them carefully, on paper, striving always to get
a final algebraic expression for the desired result BEFORE you insert the numerical values for the parameters. This separates
the formulation from the calculation and allows you to check your results
separately for numerical and conceptual errors. |
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Understand
the lab and what you will have to do with it BEFORE you go there. Then
you can do your lab work efficiently so that you can obtain the data
you need and still have time to finish the lab report and submit it
before you leave at the end of the session. |
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INTUITIVE
UNDERSTANDING is a second key.
Try to see what the objects of physical interest are and how
they are related. Then many standard equations of physics become natural
reflections of an underlying reality of which you have a grasp, rather
than mysterious incantations to be applied blindly.
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| If
you are gifted with a good memory, it will sometimes seem easier simply
to memorize an important relationship than to do the work needed to grasp
it intuitively. You should resist this temptation. Instead of memorizing
a physical relationship (e.g. as it occurs in a HW problem you have solved
successfully) and setting it aside as soon as the problem is solved, you
should instead reconsider it from various viewpoints: rearrange it, invert
it, apply it to other cases, toy with it, consider its behaviour in cases
where one or another numerical parameter becomes extremely large or extremely
small,..until it becomes so familiar that you can remember it easily,
without any need to ``memorize'' it. |
| AVOID
MEMORIZATION .
If instead you chooseto use brute memorization, you may soon arrive at
your memory overload point while still lacking the fundamental understanding
you'll need to go further. Then things get very tough very quickly. This
seems to be a special hazard for very bright students, who have done brilliantly
in High School Physics using total recall. To them Physics may look like
a piece of familiar cake. But
as the material accumulates, pure memory becomes more burdened, while
intuition becomes more and more powerful. |
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ASK
FOR EXTRA HELP. Every
TA
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