I'm in year twelve (in New Zealand, equivalent to 11th grade I think)

[LizzzyBF]

I'm in year twelve (in New Zealand, equivalent to 11th grade I think) and physics this year seems much harder than it was before. I usually got the equivalent of B's in physics last year, so I wasn't particularly great, and I want to get more A's this year (as eventually I want to be a physicist), but I don't know what I need to be doing to improve. Everything we do in class makes sense, including the example problems, but I find when we have to do problems for homework, I always go off in the wrong direction.
for example, I had a problem where you had to derive vf^2=vi^2+2ad by substituting vf=vi+at into d=(vi+vf/2)t and eliminating t. That was all given in the question. what I did was substitute straight away, but the answers say you rearrange vf=vi+at to make t the subject first. I can see in retrospect how that works, but I often find that I don't recognise things like that until I've been told.
What I'm looking for is what I can do to get good at figuring those sorts of things out, as I think that's the main reason I don't get fantastic marks.

 

[Pyrrhus]

The answer to the question varies from person to person. Some are gifted in patterns and can see it right away, others must practice quite a bit to get the hang of it, and so on.

I recommend doing all the problems in your textbook for a chapter, or at least the hard ones. That put me in the right path towards improving my analytic skills. I was quite bad at first, terrible!, but after practicing and learning what pattern to see, and what to do, I improved. Good luck!

 

[thegreenlaser]

Sounds to me like that's an issue with math more than with physics, at least for the particular example you mentioned.

I'm taking an E&M course right now, which is notorious as a 'weeder course' for engineers. The thing is, what people mostly have trouble with isn't a conceptual understanding of the physics. What kills most people is a weak foundation in calculus and linear algebra, which we use quite a bit. If you don't have a really strong foundation in math, it makes the physics a lot harder, and it makes you feel like you're bad at physics. In a way, the math in a physics class can be harder than the math in math class because you have understand it well enough and be comfortable enough with it to apply it in situations you've never seen before.

 

[LizzzyBF]

Yes, it's definitely more to do with maths. I don't have much trouble with the concepts in physics, just the problem solving. I had a physics test today, and it seems fairly easy, which either means that the work that we've been doing in class is harder than it needs to be (my teacher has been teaching us things from year 13 as well) or (more likely) I made lots of mistakes similar to that example.