How to Do Well in Physics?

mikemac
Mon, 09 Dec 2013 16:06:52 +0000

I guess what they’re assuming is that the students must have a full understanding of the concepts underlying the problems before they can successfully do them.

I don’t believe that’s what they think. Instead I imagine they want to help students discover the difference between recognition and recall. As one cognitive scientist wrote

Cognitive science research has shown that two cues are especially important in guiding our judgments of what we know: (1) our “familiarity” with a given body of information and (2) our “partial access” to that information. In this column, I’ll discuss how these two cues can lead students to believe that they know material when they don’t.
[AFT - A Union of Professionals - Ask the Cognitive Scientist](Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Why Students Think They Understand—When They Don't)

This is an excellent article I suggest you read, as well as a 2nd one he wrote [AFT - A Union of Professionals - Ask the Cognitive Scientist](Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Practice Makes Perfect—But Only If You Practice beyond the Point of Perfection)

What your teachers are asking you to do, and what successful students have discovered, is that solving practice problems strips away the illusion of thinking you understand when you don’t. If you understand the concepts then you can apply them to solve problems.

t’s not that I don’t understand the concept but that I have huge amounts of trouble in applying them in a timely fashion.

This is from your first post. I disagree. You understand them, I’d bet, in the meaning that you can repeat them and use to solve simple problems, but if you are unable to apply to more difficult problems them then you likely have what that scientist terms “shallow knowledge”. See [AFT - A Union of Professionals - Ask the Cognitive Scientist](Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Students Remember...What They Think About)

I did well over 100 problems for my last midterm and still feel like I only got through half of the problems well.

The real issue is you aren’t studying enough. There is a solution that’s easy to say, hard to do. Many good students find they need to spend 10 hours or so each week studying for math and science classes. Maybe your friend in post #5 is a genius, maybe he came into the class with a lot of background knowledge that made this class easy, maybe he studies on the sly and doesn’t tell you about it. Doesn’t matter. If a midterm covers 7 weeks of class that is 70 hours you probably should have spent preparing for the test. I doubt your 100 problems took you that much time. Furthermore it is well known that distributed practice is much more effective in learning something than cramming the last day or two.

If you want to do well on the next test, do this. Go buy the “Physics Problem Solver” book. Every week practice solving the problems in the book that match what your class is doing. Spend at least 10 hours per week total on your class; homework plus this study. You might need more because there are concepts already covered that you probably don’t know that well.