OK, thanks. it came across to me as passive-aggressive, but I appreciate that you didn’t mean it that way. In fact she is the risk-taker of my two children, and never one to back down from a challenge or a new experience.
I was asking a sincere question with no hidden agenda.
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I think because its not about checking some kind of “took physics” box but “challenged herself, including in physics”. It can be hard to make sense of college admissions, but that is what I picked up from my experience with the process so far (and I cannot wait to be done with it in a years time!) Colleges (again, lets just make sure we are talking about the same places - tippy top ones) want it all. They want you to push yourself where you have interest but also to challenge and stretch yourself outside of that too. This is particularly true of liberal arts colleges. They want depth but also broad intellectual curiosity.
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We moved right before she started high school, and unfortunately that was not an option where we came from (and I’m not sure it’s an option here, actually). But I’m sure she would have liked to have taken Bio in eighth grade. And she could have taken Chem last summer but she was doing a ballet intensive. Maybe she regrets that choice; not sure.
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An advantage is that her transcript will be read in context (as provided by the school profile/the GC) -if the option isn’t offered, or if her classes are the expected progression she won’t be penalized - students are never expected to take summer classes so that Ballet intensive was the right choice if she enjoyed it.
Posters are taking their time to provide the best advice that they can, the OP is welcome to accept it or no. However, if this thread deteriorates into an argument between posters providing the advice and the person who has solicited the advice, it will be considered to serve no purpose and will be closed.
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Which is why, OP should also consider what students with similar college ambitions are doing.
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Try to find out why your child is against taking physics. My own son was ready to swear off science and math as a high school sophomore having found the honors chem, bio & math classes up to that point unchallenging and thinking he already knew enough about physics from his middle school physical science courses to deem that subject also boring. I had to convince him that he had not yet even begun to study math or science yet and had him grudgingly skipped ahead to Physics C for his junior year alongside Calculus BC. Instead of being bored, he fell in love with physics (and math) that year and is now a college junior majoring in math, physics and cs.
Since you wrote she is strong in math and will take Calculus BC next year, maybe talk to the science department head and have her bypass physics 1 and go straight to Physics C which would be taught at a higher level to keep her interest. Our high school policy stated that physics 1 had to be taken before AP Physics C, but there were 3-4 other juniors in his class who also asked and were allowed to skip Physics 1.
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Yes, calculus-based physics may actually be more interesting to a student who likes math and is good at it. For a student who knows calculus, it may actually be easier to understand the physics with calculus than without.
In college, this would mean sharing the classroom with mostly physics and engineering majors instead of mostly pre-meds and biology majors.
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My son was in similar situation. Took Bio Accel, then Chem Accel, junior year took AP Chem and then this year as a senior he is in both AP Bio and AP Physics. AP Chem is the hardest he would say. He is also pre-med. I think having some sort of Physics would be ideal honestly as a lot of colleges look for that. Not sure what this Science research seminar is though - is that a class? Physics is hard and I think it’s best to have some under your belt before college for sure.
One daughter told me pretty much the same thing. She liked physics better once it was combined with calculus. It made more sense.
Of course calculus was originally invented or developed by a physicist, for the purpose of understanding physics better (specifically for planetary motion, if I am remembering this correctly).
I am curious how much physics is involved in radiation therapy. I did notice that in radiation treatment if they are for example fighting cancer, the various shots that they take at the cancer come from a wide range of different angles. This implies that every shot hits the cancer, but that any normal healthy tissue that is some distance from the cancer only gets hit by a few of the many shots, so that the cancer gets a significantly higher dose of radiation compared to other tissues. Also, apparently there are multiple different types of radiation beams that can be used (I think that photons / xrays are common, but protons are also possible, I have heard of experiments with mesons but apparently this turned out to be way too expensive). Have you encountered some courses in physics as being part of what it takes to study radiation therapy in university?
Two semesters of general physics is a prerequisite for admission to the program. In addition, there are three physics classes that are specifically for radiation therapy are in the curriculum, plus a radiation biology class, which looks to incorporate a lot of physics as well.
Sonography requires one semester of general physics as a prerequisite for the program, plus there are three physics classes specifically for general and cardiac sonography.
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I’m sure I will be . . . be . . . sure I . . . thud
The world will keep turning and she will succeed or fail on her work ethic. That’s as simple as it gets, physics or no physics. Me? I think she’ll be fine.
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While it’s nice to have a current college student’s perspective on the importance of physics in high school, let’s not make this a place for every adult to reminisce about their high school or college experiences.
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This is similar to D who is a junior, but she wants AP bio for 12th grade instead of physics, since she wants to be a bio major. Can you elaborate on how your daughter chose physics for 12th grade? I agree that physics is probably more important, but she is not crazy about it and her advisor (surprisingly) said it wasn’t that crucial
I agree that physics is probably more important, but she is not crazy about it and her advisor (surprisingly) said it wasn’t that crucial
Biology is a very broad discipline with lots and lots of subfields. Some subfields (molecular bio, genetics, biochemistry, physical bio, for example) require a knowledge of physics, but others may not (ecology or neuroscience* for example).
*but even this is dependent on what sub-area they study, My younger daughter was a biological neuroscience major and she did tons of MRI-based research. She needed physics to understand how the MRI worked so that when she looked at her test data she could see if she had any artifacts/errors in the results and correct for them.
Also there are different flavors of physics: classical physics (newtonian), electricity & magnetism, and modern physics (relativity and quantum mechanics). Electricity/ circuits and quantum mechanics are quite useful in biology because the former help explains things like nerve signal transmission and latter explains things like organic and molecular chemistry.
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Yeah, no Physics at all is very limiting in terms of what other science and technology you can readily understand in the future. I don’t think it has to be everyone’s favorite, but I do tend to think most professionals will benefit from having studied it seriously at least once.
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From my kids’ recent experiences, teacher quality matters A LOT with physics. Our HS has one fantastic physics teacher and a couple of less-good ones; our humanities-centric kid who was terrified of taking AP Physics 1 junior year got the good teacher and ended up loving physics so much that he decided to take E&M (again taught by the good teacher) senior year.
But I suspect it’s very different with a less-excellent teacher. So I’d encourage your kid to talk to other kids about their experiences with the physics teacher(s).
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I agree, but I’d quibble that even introductory neuroscience requires knowledge of physics. In fact, that was one of the reasons I was going to suggest an aspiring premed might want to have taken physics in HS. As you noted, it’s also helpful for lots of other bio. This includes physiology topics like cardiac and muscle, and any other case where forces are applied and/or charged ions are moving across a membrane.
When I taught neurobiology, I’d always ask how many people in the class had already taken college physics so I could get a sense of their background (it was usually not many). So in the 2nd week of class I’d have to give a crash course on potential energy, voltage, current, etc. since there’s no way you can understand an action potential (and thus much of the course’s content) without it.
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