Opinion on VCE Physics

[brightsky]

To those who have done/are doing physics 1/2 or 3/4, how are you finding/did you find it? Currently hesitating whether or not to take up physics. To say that I'm not interested in physics is inaccurate, but I find the way that it's been taught to me thus far quite unappealing.

Any comments appreciated.

[pi]

I did it (and my opinion may be highly biased), and to be perfectly honest, I hated it and regretted taking it since April-ish. What I found really bad was:
- How much rubbish the textbooks had (+ they were heavy too)
- The quality of my VCE physics teachers (beyond bad and boring)
- Study aids weren't great (A+ Notes, etc.)
- The clac-bashing errors
- I wasn't really interested in a lot of what was being taught (structures and materials? electronics?)

That's just my opinion, but I really disliked the subject and I can't recommend to anyone unless they are genuinely interested in the 3/4 topics and are highly meticulous in their working.

[jaydee]

i did it for 1&2 this year and I didn't find it all that interesting but I'm continuing it with 3&4 anyway (bought the text already and can't be bothered changing the subject). For me personlly I found physics more tedious than chemistry and more dry as well. Also agree with Rohitpi about the textbook being freaking heavy (It was a nightmare when I had a session with psychology too). It's up to you if you want to do it but there are more definitely more "interesting" subjects out there. Nevertheless it is still a good subject and there are plenty of resources to help!

[Lasercookie]

I think I'll be the opposite to everyone else here, but I truly did enjoy the subject a lot. I think what matters is the perspective you view the subject with.

So I've done some recent reading up on equivalent Physics related syllabus, IB Physics, A-level physics, AP Physics, HSC Physics etc. and in terms of the content covered over Units 1 to 4, VCE Physics stands up quite well. The content that is covered is quite interesting (or at least I found it so) - in particular I found the unit 3 spesh relativity detailed study heavily interesting as well interactions of light and matter. Actually, I enjoyed the entirety of Unit 4 quite a fair bit.


Where VCE Physics fails are the exams - and this (I think) is why most people don't like VCE Physics. The questions focus on number-crunching and other tricks, instead of providing genuinely challenging questions. "calc-bashing" as Rohitpi mentioned.

This weakness really reveals itself with the Motion topic. Motion in VCE Physics is crippled. The ideas itself are interesting, but the questions we are given to do really let it down. 

Back to talking about the perspective thing I mentioned - I think to enjoy the subject, you have to think about the ideas and theory that you're being taught - otherwise all that is left are (for the most part) boring questions.

Another weakness are the textbooks. None of them are an amazing and fascinating read - I did often find myself doing a lot of reading outside of the VCE textbooks. Of course, all that did was fuel my interest in the ideas of the subject and allowed me to see how what we were taught related to "the bigger picture".

[Reckoner]

I did 1/2 this year, and didn't like it much at all. Teacher was dead boring and I didn't find the content interesting at all. Was (and still am) tempted to change to accounting; something that I definitely do enjoy more. 

[iirene]

Did 1/2 Physics this year and I thought it was awesome
However, I think it might be due to my awesome physics teacher who just told us semi-random things/facts in relation to our topics <3
He would always start the lesson off with something "different"
e.g. youtube clip on a train powered by a superconductor (omgfloatingtrain), bringing in lollies to kick start the concept of electricity (we travelled around the room like "coulombs" of charge and each time we passed the 'battery', we got a lolly (voltage) and consumed the voltage whenever we passed a 'circuit' element which was useful in terms of parallel/series circuits), stabbing lollies on opposite ends of skewers and lining them up by sticking the middle part on a long piece of masking tape then just flinging it to see some properties of waves, etc
Oh, a really interesting youtuber is "minutephysics" 'Explains' some awesome things <3

Motion became really tedious though
But all the other topics were pretty straight forward/interesting
Side note for astrophysics: you could say that we were all made from star dust in the literal sense

So yea, I think I really applied myself in physics because my teacher was awesome (and so I enjoyed learning the subject)
Not to say that there weren't some lessons where it was just omg-when-is-this-class-going-to-end

And the tests weren't too difficult (in my opinion) as we were allowed to bring in a 'cheat sheet' for each one, as you will be able to do so for the exam. Basically, I placed all the theory stuff on there (so I didn't have to memorise it). But a big part of physics is also being able to answer mathy type questions ie. interpreting it. After that, as with any question in any subject, its pretty straightforward (since you get a formula sheet as well)

[Aurelian]

Before commenting, may I ask what exactly your hesitations are, brightsky...?

[osgood]

I took 1/2 units and I couldn't bring myself to continue onto 3/4, like many of the above, I found it tedious.
I fond the concepts- with many concepts you encounter in physics, you have to just believe them blindly- took a while to grasp and whenever a new concept was introduced, I felt like pulling out my hair.
Luckily, there's a flip side, once you DO grasp said concepts, it's pretty breezy from there, it's all about application application application. Plus there's an abundance of physics resources on this site so I think anybody can do really well in it if they try hard enough..not sure how many people really enjoy physics though!

[BakaNeko]

I did physics this year and last year and the things that kept me going were my teacher and the knowledge that the concepts we learn in VCE are only the tip of the iceberg. The tiny, tiny, tiny, TINY tip of the massive iceberg.

Having said that, if it's not the concepts of the subject that are holding you back and you're apprehensive because of the supposed difficulty, I can say that it's not that bad. Once you've got a good cheat sheet and understand the concepts, you're set. Like osgood says, it's all about application application and application. Also, like osgood says as well, the main difficulty of Physics is getting the concepts. Just accept them. Don't delve too deeply of you'll fall of the tiny tip of the iceberg and land yourself in the seas of misunderstanding and confusion.

Yeah.

ESSENTIALLY I liked physics. My teacher was awesome. The stuff you do might not make sense but after a while it'll work.

DON'T BE SCARED.

[Bozo]

Look to be honest, physics is really easy. I never even opened the text book once this year, don't even buy it, honestly...

I lived off the A+ notes, youtube, checkpoints and khanacademy. Trust me its a very easy subject to grasp and i found that doing the checkpoints as questions throughout the year provided great foundation.

I advise people really give the subject a go because it is quite enjoyable and fun. Spam checkpoint questions rather than doing any text book questions and i guarantee you'll have a firm understanding of all the aspects of your topics.

[86]

The difficulty will only ease up when you start unit 4. Sure, there will be more complicated concepts to grasp like Lenz and Faraday's laws and operation of a commutator, but with a little help it's fairly easy to understand. Motion was a really annoying topic and was poorly taught at my school.

Likewise, the textbooks are atrocious. To the point where our school decided to write their own book, which made no real difference anyway as they couldn't even number the pages properly. On the other hand, resources on the internet (webpages with animated gif's and Youtube playlists) are quite good, and I used derekowens for those complex concepts. His videos are seriously great.

It's a really competitive subject, and the scaling isn't all that impressive, although you shouldn't really factor in scaling to subject selection. The past exams from VCAA are a very good resource for preperation, although I found the practice exams from other companies didn't really focus 100% on the course and often deviated into lesser relevant things.

Has anyone had Colin Hopkins come to their school? He's the guy who taught a bunch of rural kids about 10 years ago. They all received 40+ and he received a lot of money from VCAA. He came to my school for both unit 3 and 4, and his question booklets are just excellent. He has a huge wealth of old questions (old = 6+ years) that VCAA put in their past papers that he emphasizes that they sometimes repeat. He even has questions from the 80's, where question numbers went beyond 80 - the 'real physics' days as he says.

Lastly, I ditched textbooks for TSFX master class notes. They were also very good and really helped in creating my cheatsheet. If anyone signs up for Physics Master class, be sure to put down Greg as your teacher. He is just amazing and I'm highly jealous of the Physics students at his school. Anyone here from his school?

[AllAboutTheLGs]

Did 1/2 this year and had the most awesome teacher ever. He actually made physics enjoyable. Pretty much only reason I managed to score consistent 95%+'s

[dc302]

From looking at your signature, brightsky, I see no reason to pick up physics as a 7th(?) subject. For what reason would you consider picking it up?

[taiga]

I'll say it's very useful if you go onto doing Engineering, really gives you a head start on about 4-5 subjects (when combined with spesh).

Hated it whilst I was doing it though. Mainly to do with my attitude towards the physics staff at my school though (I didn't think particularly high of the department). My only study for the subject during the year was practice exams spamming for literally 1 day each semester, my SACs were poor.

I think it's worth taking if you're interested in it and looking to go onto Engineering.

[mr.politiks]

Totally agree with taiga, 86 and laserdd. With physics, I think the interest for me was only in the concepts, not the questions or the exam. If you want to enjoy it (which may help you do better), I think its really important to be thrilled by concepts etc. In year twelve unit 3 mat and struc was quite interesting for me because of its applications to real world stuff, whilst motion and electronics were interesting because i began to look at more difficult real world problems (light circuits with transistors and many inclined plane questions, energy questions and the like as opposed to boring repetitive circular motion and projectile motion). Unit 4 really did it for me as I was gripped by the fundamentals behind magnetism and electromagnetic induction, along with light (i read up a bit on Maxwell's equations, relativity - which is the basis for magnetism and is really freakishly amazing if you get it). Tying all the questions i did back to this stuff (though i barely understood most of it) kind of kept me convinced that even though what i was doing was pretty dry the concepts behind it weren't.