- #1
Chunkysalsa
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So my best friend and I are taking Calculus based physics I together right now and are about at the half way point.
I'm averaging a B which on the last test only 4 other people had. He is averaging an F, which is average in the class lol.
Since he is my best friend, I've offered to help him out. However I'm no teacher and I'm finding it difficult to help him out.
So far I've just been assigning him extra problems to do every day and explaining them if he gets stuck. I've noticed he has very poor algebra skills (no idea how he made an A in Calculus 2). Today I asked him to factor out velocity out of a "relatively" long conservation of energy equation and he got confused. He has a bad habit of plugging in numbers as soon as he can and our professor has a habit of asking question with no numbers and are answered symbolically.
He says he has a problem with word problems which account for 99.9999% of the problems. I keep telling him to go sentence by sentence word by word and pick out the information given and write it down. His low self confidence in his physics is a big hurdle to overcome.
His highest test score has been like a 55 and I need him to make at the minimum a C but even then will be close since the final will be very hard for him (cumulative) there is not that much time to go over the entire class up to this point.
Now I'm not being totally altruistic here. By forcing him to do extra problems, I'm forcing myself to do them too so I can answer his question. A B might be good in relation to the rest of the class, but I'd really like to get higher (not even for GPA, more for self pride). Another problem is that I can't exactly assign more problems than I can do myself since I have a part time job unlike him. Trying to get him to be studying more independently but time is very short.
We are also on rotational kinematics and dynamics, which according to you guys is the most troublesome part of physics I.
Sorry for my long rants, I'm just feeling a bit helpless for him and looking for some tips on how to help him (and prolly myself too lol).
I'm averaging a B which on the last test only 4 other people had. He is averaging an F, which is average in the class lol.
Since he is my best friend, I've offered to help him out. However I'm no teacher and I'm finding it difficult to help him out.
So far I've just been assigning him extra problems to do every day and explaining them if he gets stuck. I've noticed he has very poor algebra skills (no idea how he made an A in Calculus 2). Today I asked him to factor out velocity out of a "relatively" long conservation of energy equation and he got confused. He has a bad habit of plugging in numbers as soon as he can and our professor has a habit of asking question with no numbers and are answered symbolically.
He says he has a problem with word problems which account for 99.9999% of the problems. I keep telling him to go sentence by sentence word by word and pick out the information given and write it down. His low self confidence in his physics is a big hurdle to overcome.
His highest test score has been like a 55 and I need him to make at the minimum a C but even then will be close since the final will be very hard for him (cumulative) there is not that much time to go over the entire class up to this point.
Now I'm not being totally altruistic here. By forcing him to do extra problems, I'm forcing myself to do them too so I can answer his question. A B might be good in relation to the rest of the class, but I'd really like to get higher (not even for GPA, more for self pride). Another problem is that I can't exactly assign more problems than I can do myself since I have a part time job unlike him. Trying to get him to be studying more independently but time is very short.
We are also on rotational kinematics and dynamics, which according to you guys is the most troublesome part of physics I.
Sorry for my long rants, I'm just feeling a bit helpless for him and looking for some tips on how to help him (and prolly myself too lol).