- #1
Lord Satin
- 15
- 0
[You don't need to read the whole thing, but I'd recommend doing so, because there are examples of my struggles somewhere in there, like specific problems.]
Greetings as usual,
It's me again. That hopeful physicist who somehow found himself at the wrong place with the wrong mind in the wrong situation. So I've got a pretty severe issue right now...
School's finished. I'll be seeing my high school for the first time in two months! Tenth year by the way, not ninth. Different system. High school is year 10-14 (or 10-12, if you get a skill). So, since I was in a special needs school (don't ask how I got there, it's quite embarrassing), which impeded my progress quite severely, I taught myself a lot of stuff like trig or precalc to compensate. But I completely forgot about my lacking knowledge of physics!
So now I'm revising with Khan Academy. Trying to make up for all those lost opportunities for a proper education. Maths are going alright. Could be worse. But my physics knowledge is atrocious! Our teacher apparently forgot to teach us anything but the basic concepts! Now that I think back, we never did actual problems on physics, so I think that could be it.
Basically, I can't solve any problems at all. I could solve a problem with a constantly decelerating spaceship perfectly and within seconds. But when it comes to cars, people, koalas, flying chickens or hamsters moving across graphs? No way. I'm hitting a wall.
I really don't know why, but I can't seem to get a basic grasp of kinematics. I'm seriously struggling. There's a question about a book falling from a window that's 13.7 meters high. It asks how fast (I mean, in how much time) the book falls to the ground, without any air resistance. Acceleration is constant, 9.82m/s^2. So I applied logic (I wanted to see if I could finish it without the tutorial), and said that in the first second, it travels 9.82 meters down. In the second second (odd word connection), it traveled twice as far (since it accelerated). So I took 13.7 and subtracted the 9.82 meters that the book already traveled. Then I found that after those 9.82 meters, the book has a velocity of 19,64 m/s. So I used that classic formula I still miraculously remember; t = d/v. So I take 3.88 and divide it by 19.64. I get a result, add it to the one second I recorded from before, and behold... It's wrong. Almost half a second off.
So there. I don't get it. Am I going too far ahead? We were taught Newtonian physics in 6th grade (the concepts anyway), but maybe it's revised and done more in-detail later? I see lots of 10th years talking about kinematics, so I'm a bit confused.
Even if that's true, I don't know why I have so much trouble understanding such a simple concept. I don't rely on formulas. I don't like doing it. If I can't figure it out, I'll look, but I usually get too angry to remember them!
It's a real shame, because I want to understand. I want to walk outside, look at a tram, and understand what makes it move. I want to be able to look at the world around me and realize that I understand what makes it tick. I want to face challenging problems that require solutions. But it looks like I might not be quite good enough after all.
It'd be a real shame if my dream came crashing down just because of motion physics...
Anyone know any way to fix this issue? Any experiences? Advice? I'm desperate for help, because not even Khan Academy can help me now. And we all know that when Khan Academy can't help, the situation is truly dire...
Thanks!
Greetings as usual,
It's me again. That hopeful physicist who somehow found himself at the wrong place with the wrong mind in the wrong situation. So I've got a pretty severe issue right now...
School's finished. I'll be seeing my high school for the first time in two months! Tenth year by the way, not ninth. Different system. High school is year 10-14 (or 10-12, if you get a skill). So, since I was in a special needs school (don't ask how I got there, it's quite embarrassing), which impeded my progress quite severely, I taught myself a lot of stuff like trig or precalc to compensate. But I completely forgot about my lacking knowledge of physics!
So now I'm revising with Khan Academy. Trying to make up for all those lost opportunities for a proper education. Maths are going alright. Could be worse. But my physics knowledge is atrocious! Our teacher apparently forgot to teach us anything but the basic concepts! Now that I think back, we never did actual problems on physics, so I think that could be it.
Basically, I can't solve any problems at all. I could solve a problem with a constantly decelerating spaceship perfectly and within seconds. But when it comes to cars, people, koalas, flying chickens or hamsters moving across graphs? No way. I'm hitting a wall.
I really don't know why, but I can't seem to get a basic grasp of kinematics. I'm seriously struggling. There's a question about a book falling from a window that's 13.7 meters high. It asks how fast (I mean, in how much time) the book falls to the ground, without any air resistance. Acceleration is constant, 9.82m/s^2. So I applied logic (I wanted to see if I could finish it without the tutorial), and said that in the first second, it travels 9.82 meters down. In the second second (odd word connection), it traveled twice as far (since it accelerated). So I took 13.7 and subtracted the 9.82 meters that the book already traveled. Then I found that after those 9.82 meters, the book has a velocity of 19,64 m/s. So I used that classic formula I still miraculously remember; t = d/v. So I take 3.88 and divide it by 19.64. I get a result, add it to the one second I recorded from before, and behold... It's wrong. Almost half a second off.
So there. I don't get it. Am I going too far ahead? We were taught Newtonian physics in 6th grade (the concepts anyway), but maybe it's revised and done more in-detail later? I see lots of 10th years talking about kinematics, so I'm a bit confused.
Even if that's true, I don't know why I have so much trouble understanding such a simple concept. I don't rely on formulas. I don't like doing it. If I can't figure it out, I'll look, but I usually get too angry to remember them!
It's a real shame, because I want to understand. I want to walk outside, look at a tram, and understand what makes it move. I want to be able to look at the world around me and realize that I understand what makes it tick. I want to face challenging problems that require solutions. But it looks like I might not be quite good enough after all.
It'd be a real shame if my dream came crashing down just because of motion physics...
Anyone know any way to fix this issue? Any experiences? Advice? I'm desperate for help, because not even Khan Academy can help me now. And we all know that when Khan Academy can't help, the situation is truly dire...
Thanks!