Expert Tips for Tackling Optics, Nuclear, and Particle Physics in Exam Revision

[astronium]

Hey

I have a Physics exam in a week’s time which covers Optics, Nuclear & Particle Physics. They are all third year courses and the exam itself is one that I really need to pass – and get a good grade in. I have been revising for about two months but I still can’t say that I’m comfortable enough with the material to be able to sit the exam confidently.

I would appreciate any advice you can give about how you tackle the contents related to these kinds of physics courses and how I can build up my knowledge/problem solving for the exam?

Thanks

 

[mgb_phys]

Past papers.
Gives you practice in reading questions, at the correct level, let's know what they are looking for and old questions crop up again regularly.

 

[jacohen]

I would recommend looking for the general problem solving methods you apply to the normal questions that you solve on your homework and on other assigned work. For me, this is the most effective way of learning the material as trying to prepare for each type of problem leads you to trying to memorize a bunch of derived equations. Then, come test day, one problem will have one slight change between what you memorized and what is written and will completely throw you off, possibly making you forget what it was you memorized (I just had a flashback of my EM final last week).

Bottom line, develop your own method of problem solving and practice it over and over again until even the oddest, most seemingly difficult problem can be broken down into something simple to solve.