Developing more practical insights into real situations in Physics

[Lukeblackhill]

Good Evening Mates,

I've been following up with the Forum for a couple of months now, and I've noticed how some of the members are able to give some deep answers for seemingly simple questions. I'm in my second year of undergrad's school, and have studied the basis of Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Electricity, besides the introductionary disciplines of calculus and maths.

I was wondering whether I could study some material that could give me some more practical insights to real situations...or if that is something that comes as I progress in my studies.

Thank you!
Cheers,
Luke.

 

[Choppy]

Insight into real situations tends to come with experience dealing with those real situations. It's not just about reading the material in a book and working your way through the exercises (though that is a component of it). Once you understand the theory though coursework, you set out and start working on real projects and then you go back through your coursework trying to figure out solutions to problems that don't have a simple answer printed in the back of the book. Its when you do enough of that you start to see your theory work through the lens of the different projects you take on.

 

[berkeman]

I was wondering whether I could study some material that could give me some more practical insights to real situations...or if that is something that comes as I progress in my studies.

you set out and start working on real projects and then you go back through your coursework trying to figure out solutions to problems that don't have a simple answer printed in the back of the book.

I think this is an important point by @Choppy -- working on real-world projects (even relatively simple ones) helps you to start to learn to "ask the right questions" of yourself and your instructors as you learn new material.

For example, for EE students and electronics hobbyists, I often recommend that they start building electronics kits (there are many inexpensive ones) early in their studies. The kits usually come with the schematic and some tutorial information about how the circuit works (like an FM radio, or an electronic thermometer and display, etc.). When you start seeing practical circuits, even simple ones, you start asking questions like "why did they pick that transistor" or "why did they chose those values of bias resistors", etc. Then when you are studying circuits, you start asking many of the same questions as you learn the new material, and you find that you are starting to develop an intuition about how different circuits and systems work.

Before I went to university, I was building simple radio kits and similar projects, and at university in my spare time I built a power supply, a digital clock, a laser light-organ with a deflection mirror, and some other stuff that slips my mind right now. Each project challenged me to learn new things, and I was able to apply my learning to my EE studies, and often came up with questions about my studies that I would not have thought of without having run into issues on my personal projects.

So for MEs, they can build more mechanically oriented projects (especially with the great advances in 3-D printing!), and I would think for Physics students, you can probably think of some fun projects that you could undertake. Look at your upcoming coursework, and think about what kind of personal projects you might be able to do to help you develop more intuition about the Math and Physics that you are learning. Have fun!