How to learn physics content?

[Peanut Butter]

A lot people say it's best to do practise questions to study for physics. However, I was wondering what is the best way to learn the content, prior to practise questions. Memorising? Palm-cards?

All responses are greatly appreciated!!

Thanks so much

[Zealous]

Make sure your theory is very strong before moving onto practice questions - the theory is really what separates students, so if you're aiming for top scores make sure you know it well!

The order of how I learnt the theory last year (when I was studying outside of class) was textbook > videos > teacher. So I'd first read the textbook, try learn as much as I can from it, then move on to YouTube videos and if all of that didn't help me learn the theory, I'd send an email and organise a time to meet up with my teacher. And posting for help in these forums was also something I did when I didn't want to bother my teacher (in busier parts of the year). So really make use of as many different resources as possible as they all present the information in different ways, so sometimes you need to hear something in a different way before it "clicks".

Some good channels for videos are:
https://www.youtube.com/user/xmphysics/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid
https://www.youtube.com/user/WeAreShowboat/videos
as well as Khanacademy of course.

Hope this helps!

[JackSonSmith]

I find the VTextbook videos on Physics to be quite useful too.

[MagicGecko]

Hmm I Didn't do physics in year 12 but my good mate, Isaac.N, did. He said these were the three ways he studied:

1. "Had a pretty good mindset. You won't go anywhere if you have a bad one, but when you feel enthusiastic, you feel like you have enough force to keep going."

2. "When it  came to the 'theory' aspect of physics, I found that the use of Flashcards resulted  in Maxiumum Achievement. A little thing I like to abbreviate to F=ma."

3. "Just do a ton of questions.
     For every question you do, you will gain an equal and opposite perspective on how to tackle said questions."

[Kel9901]

A lot people say it's best to do practise questions to study for physics. However, I was wondering what is the best way to learn the content, prior to practise questions. Memorising? Palm-cards?

All responses are greatly appreciated!!

Thanks so much

For the calculations (over 60% of the marks, huge part of exam), you just need to keep doing them, and keep doing them until what you used to do wrong, you now do right.

Zealous covered the resources part for theory, but the most important thing is to understand everything inside your head (if you know what I mean). Putting it down on paper is the easier part and can just be done in dot points. Remember that some theory questions are pure theory (how experiments a, b, c support the wave nature of light and d and e the particle nature), and others involve calculations/formulae (most notably the elastic/inelastic collisions that seem to be on like every exam or two). Make use of formulae and calculations to show examiners you know what you are talking about.