Question: What is the best way to revise and what are the best ways to get your head around physics? :)

Kristian Harder answered on 18 Nov 2013:

Hello Miss Beardy,
Everyone is different, and what works for me may not be the best thing for you, but here’s how I revise things:
I try to split what I have to learn into small chunks and then go through them all once, find out which parts I already know. I then ignore those and focus on the rest, going through them one by one, again crossing off what I think I know well meanwhile, and so on, until nothing is left.
This works very easily with foreign language vocabulary, for example, or for the multiplication tables we had to learn in primary school, because you can make little cards, one side with the question, the other side with the answer. Then you can go through the pile of cards, put the ones you know to the side, shuffle the remaining ones occasionally so you don’t get too used to questions asked in the same order each time.
With more complicated topics such as physics these cards may not be the best thing. I tried to do something similar by marking textbooks. (Of course only the ones I actually owned, not the ones borrowed from school/library/university. 🙂 ) I tried to highlight the essential information in each section, and then go through section by section a few times, each time skipping the ones I felt I knew enough about.

I am not sure what to respond to the second part of the question, because I don’t quite know what you are having difficulties with. Is it that you are not interested in physics but have to do it in school anyway? That can be hard, I know. I remember I also wasn’t very interested in physics the first year we had it in school. In my case the problem got solved because the next year we had a teacher who did a very good job presenting physics in a way that was interesting for me. If your teacher doesn’t find the right way of doing this for you, then your best bet is maybe to read a few general science books. There are a few good ones that deal with the big questions in science (how the universe works), and a few good ones that deal with the small questions in science (how a bicycle works or whatever). Maybe through one of these roads you’ll suddenly find it very interesting and truly amazing to be able to predict how long it will take a sphere to roll down a slope. 🙂
If your problem is instead part 1 of your question, difficulties to get all the maths and laws of physics into your head, then see above. 🙂
Ok, but I also have to say that physics clearly isn’t for everyone. Some people just don’t like asking the kind of questions that physics is dealing with, and if that’s the case for you, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. There are plenty of other things to do in life. We do require that you learn at least a little bit about physics,t hough, so you don’t end up trying to fall uphill. Ever. 😉