How to get 100% in Physics course?

[MathINTJ]

Hey, thanks everyone for the responses. I hate to bring up a dead thread but I didn't want anybody's' opinion to go unnoticed. As of right now I have a 77% in the class. I continue to fail exams but my lab, quiz and homework grades keep me a float.

 

[Simon Bridge]

Hah! I used to have the opposite problem - failing in class and passing exams. My teachers thought I was cheating but never caught me at it. It got so I never attended class at all and just followed the course at my own pace - study guides were very helpful.

 

[Listiba]

The only people I know who got 100% on most/all tests were those who were retaking the class or learned the material in their home country and for whatever reason couldn't skip the course.

The best advice I can give is to GO OVER YOUR TEST WITH YOUR PROFESSOR. Most of the time you end up with a few bonus points. They don't always pick up on your thought process and conclude you were writing down a bunch of nonsense. Also try to write everything in the order you would like to see it if you were grading your test. If you're constantly moving from the top of the page to the bottom, to the right, to the top, it's hard for the grader to follow. If time permits, I write a little paragraph explaining the process I used to attempt a solution. For example, if you believe the sum of forces in the y direction is 0, explain why (i.e. acceleration is 0 => ma = 0). Basically show absolutely everything. They appreciate that.

 

[Simon Bridge]

If time permits, I write a little paragraph explaining the process I used to attempt a solution. For example, if you believe the sum of forces in the y direction is 0, explain why (i.e. acceleration is 0 => ma = 0). Basically show absolutely everything. They appreciate that.

Amen. If time is short - arrows are good for showing work-flow.
Putting a box around your final answer and writing "ans/" next to it is good too.

 

[Mdhiggenz]

Everyone is different, but there is one thing that everyone who gets As have in common. They try to know EVERYTHING.

Seriously, physics exams are around 1-5 chapters at most. What I do is

1. Read the chapter before class and do the book examples.

2. During lecture I absorb everything the teacher says rarely take notes, and if I do take notes it will be hints that will be on the exam.

3. After class I read the powerpoint.

4. Do every single problem in the book, even the challenging problems. While working the problems, write the definition of the style of problem you are solving, and or rules.

5. I like to put a small red mark on questions that I could not solve or that were pretty hard.

6. redo those problems when studying for the exam.

This is pretty much what I do when I want to get an A

 

[member 392791]

Reading this, I really think you can train yourself to learn physics. You may not be the next Albert Einstein, but I think a good chunk of the population could learn an intro physics sequence sufficiently if they put in a lot of effort.

Point in case, I am doing an engineering major and the majority of my classmates are asian. There is no way all of those people are naturally gifted in science/math, they just work hard.

 

[Mdhiggenz]

I agree Woopy, Asian cultures are conditioned at a very young age to study hard. I think they do have an advantage though, I mean they start calculus in 3rd grade...lol

 

[member 392791]

I agree Woopy, Asian cultures are conditioned at a very young age to study hard. I think they do have an advantage though, I mean they start calculus in 3rd grade...lol

Perhaps it's not that extreme...but nonetheless, you definitely don't need to be naturally gifted to get through a physics/math sequence that a typical engineer major would need to go through, it's just that the vast majority of people aren't willing to put in the work.

It's the same thing with the Piano or whatever, lots of asian people are good at it, not because they have the natural talent of Mozart, but because they just practice a lot.

And to get back to the OP...you don't need 100% to get an A in the class, just a 90%+

But funny you mention it, I did get 100% on my first physics exam this semester, and I really tried to understand the concepts more deeply. It was about mechanical waves/simple harmonic motion, if you look up my previous posts you'll see I was very confused about the topic, but other posters (thx simon bridge) helped clear up my misconceptions and I understood it at the level that my professor wanted me to understand it apparently.

 

[FalseVaccum89]

It's not uncommon in the US for someone to totally mess up freshmen year, and then unmess themselves.

Quite. I'm in this boat myself. It's possible. . .

 

[Lavabug]

Simple answer: sometimes, you can't.

I don't see the problem with failing an exam unless you're the only one that fails it in a sufficiently large class.

At my university, like many in Spain, we have two dates to choose from for the final exam, usually on separate weeks. For the first round of QM1, everybody failed (8/13 students) and on the second round there were 2 near-perfect scores, one moderately decent pass, and another 2 F's. Mind you the people that failed were extremely hard workers that toiled much to stay on top of classes, but there's not much you can do when you get thrown an original problem that is completely different/leaps and bounds higher in difficulty than anything seen in class and are expected to complete it to near-perfection under tight time constraints (even 4-5 hours is tight).

2nd year geometric optics and analytical mechanics (Goldstein & Landau) had somewhat similar outcomes (very low class average with the same 2 anomalous students, lots of F's and only one person passed any of the (2) mechanics resits (me!).

FWIW, I am now an exchange student at a top 10 UK institution taking QM2 and I am almost feeling insulted with the homework problem sheets and exam questions, they are essentially far simpler versions of the problems I had to toil with in QM1. (that being said, lecturers are leaps and bounds better).

The problem is your own if the class average is cleanly above a pass and you aren't passing.

 

[deluks917]

The only way I can get 100% on exams is if I am a class that is far too easy for me and/or I already knew the material before taking the class. If you could get 100% you'd probably be better off in a different class.

 

[FalseVaccum89]

Not to be glib, but if you want an algorithm for doing well on any kind of problem-solving test, I have a method that works.

A) Go to class (and pay attention)
B) Do your assignments in a timely manner (i.e. don't wait until the last minute; see below)
C) Check your work, and redo problems similar to the ones you get wrong until you 'get it'.
D) DON'T STRESS OUT ON TEST DAY! By then, you either know it or you don't; worrying about it is going to make things much harder on you than they need to be.

 

[physicsl0ver]

OK, this question is for those who is genuinely amongst the group to which I am referring to. I just got my physics exam back (college) and I got a 39%. Don't ask me how it happen. The teacher displayed our grades on the black board...there was...and it IS always...ALWAYS, that 100% in the midst of failures...Who is that person? Once and for all I want to use the internet to issue a request...Please can That SPECIFIC category respond to this ONLY..HOW DO YOU GET 100% on a physics examination?I appreciate all genuine responses from this group of people...No ad-homeniems...as i does not develop the yaddah yaddah ya...

Introductory physics is fairly simple. You will learn concepts, and formulas, that will adhere those concepts into mathematical language.
Then... You will be given a word problem or some sort of fixed diagram with a word problem. All you need to do is decipher how to appropriately obtain what is required from what is given, then its basically plug and chug.

 

[member 392791]

That is basically intro physics, but it's a lot easier said than done

Deciphering a word problem is not so trivial.

 

[physicsl0ver]

That is basically intro physics, but it's a lot easier said than done

Deciphering a word problem is not so trivial.

I don't know what to tell you. The OP asked for someone who receives 100's and high marks in physics, which I've done. I'm just stating it how I look at it. This is my thought process and I find the vast majority of intro physics problems very easy to comprehend.

 

[trueo]

Learn the tests in advance

 

[mpresic]

My own experience. I have seen exam scores in my classes put on the blackboard. I have never seen 100% on from anyone from any of my exams (except for a rare trivial exam where there are many 100%s). As a TA, I have occasionally missed getting 100% in exams professors have given to students at the freshman level. I have had professors tell me they took the same test I took when I was a college junior and they told me they did not score 100%. Sometimes exams are made too long, a variety of reasons preclude universal 100%'s.

 

[Simon Bridge]

If you are getting 100% it means the exam has been made too easy - so it is not a good test - or that you are working in a class that is below your abilities and you should be in the next level up.

However - I have seen cases where someone consistently scores 100% in finals but you can see their test results through the year climb.
It's very unusual and I have always suspected that these students were just not getting challenged by the material.

Sometimes there is scaling so the highest scored student automatically gets 100% and all the other students are adjusted to fit some preconceived idea about what the mark distribution should be.

It's done the other way too - to make it harder to score top marks. I've seen an exponential scaling for practical work - so it was fairly easy to get 30-40%, but getting that past 90% was really difficult - requiring things like "originality" and "flair". I once gave 100% to a student who redesigned the experiment in such a way he demonstrated that he understood scientific method and the general principles in the theory. His results were way worse than everyone else but I figured that didn't matter.

Lots of people complain about the time - I used to set exams so that it would take me less than 1/4 the available time to complete them. i.e. it take 1/4 of the set time to write the expected working to the answers when you know what the answer is already. The other 3/4 time is for the student to figure it out - and there were always built in shortcuts for alert students.

I had a prof for postgrad QM who gave assignments his students would use 5-10 pages to complete - and the model answers would come back on a single sheet.

I, personally, once scored 125% in a final exam - it was a practical and it had bonus marks and penalty marks.
125 was the maximum score - so you could call that "100%" if you like - but I still did not pick up all the marks available for each section. The highest percentage of available marks I ever got in an assessment was 98% - that was a restaurant manager test, quite easy questions but the pass mark was 80%.

The near impossibility of getting an even 100% is why scores get grouped A+, A, A-, B+, etc.
I knew someone who managed to collect every single letter-grade that the University awarded - including every possible way to fail. He treated exams like sport fishing - he'd deliberately target a particular grade.

One way I learned to get higher grades was to answer the essay question.
We used to get exams like "answer any 5 questions out of the 7" and one of the questions was always
"write an essay about some aspect of the coursework that you enjoyed (20)" ... nobody would do it. It turned out that because nobody did it, it was marked so very leniently that almost anything would get full marks.