Physics for leaving

Shoot-a

Hi all

im seroiusly considering taking physics for the leaving cert and without going into a big background about me i was wondering does anyone have any comments,recommendations etc etc

mawk

Shoot-a wrote:

Hi all

im seroiusly considering taking physics for the leaving cert and without going into a big background about me i was wondering does anyone have any comments,recommendations etc etc

without telling us anything how can we reccommend?

but.... yeah do it.

its a lot different to junior cert though. in fact it becomes nothing but memorizing formulae and doing maths..

its a lot to take in at first but once you figure it out a bit it makes the whole world seem a lot less random.

and with a quote like " to understand the mind of a man, you study religion. but to know the mind of god you must study physics"

who wouldnt want to learn it?

ZorbaTehZ

Why don't you repost in the LC forums where other LC'ers can give you better info?
Speaking of which there was a poll recently in said forum of which subject students considered to be the most difficult for the LC, and Physics overwhelmingly topped that poll. But obviously it depends a lot on what you yourself feel. Personally I love the subject, and its probably my favourite.

Beelzebub

If you are strong in Maths do it.
If you are in any way weak at Maths don't do it.

Civilian_Target

Physics is not your typical LC subject in the same way Maths isn't. There's quite a bit of problem solving: learning the correct tools for the job, learning the different types of problems and learning which tool to use for which problem. There's also the tedious matter of memorising how experiments are done, but on the whole it's a lot more applied and a lot less tedious than most Leaving Cert subjects, but more work is required than you're going to need so, say, Geography.

Shoot-a

mawk wrote:

without telling us anything how can we reccommend?

well i am quite good at maths and i enjoy it when im not under pressure with it.I'm hoping to do computer science course or electronics in college so I presume that physics will help me.Im probably not doing any other science (possibly geography, as accepted as science in trinity i think) or applied maths so I shouldnt be too stressed out with maths if I do it.

copacetic

i'd do it if you are suited to it. like maths you can get a really high mark if you know your stuff. I got my highest mark in physics in leaving (and went on to electronics in ucd)

4Xcut

Beelzebub wrote:

If you are strong in Maths do it.
If you are in any way weak at Maths don't do it.

This is a complete falacy, if you can re-arrange formulae and multiply by decimals then you should be grand on the maths side.

And yes i did maths, applied maths and physics for the leaving so i know what i'm talking about.

And no the fact that i did app. maths does not mean that i wouldn't know what i was talking about in relation to weaker maths students.

copacetic

4Xcut wrote:

This is a complete falacy, if you can re-arrange formulae and multiply by decimals then you should be grand on the maths side.

And yes i did maths, applied maths and physics for the leaving so i know what i'm talking about.

And no the fact that i did app. maths does not mean that i wouldn't know what i was talking about in relation to weaker maths students.

i'd agree with this (well apart from all the 'I'm great I know what I am talking about comments').

You need very little maths skills for physics, none at all really past using the calculator.

breadmonkey

4Xcut wrote:

This is a complete falacy, if you can re-arrange formulae and multiply by decimals then you should be grand on the maths side.

And yes i did maths, applied maths and physics for the leaving so i know what i'm talking about.

And no the fact that i did app. maths does not mean that i wouldn't know what i was talking about in relation to weaker maths students.

You're wrong. People who aren't good at maths struggle at physics. I've seen it at Leaving Cert level and in a class of would be engineers.

Doing applied maths makes physics a p!ss take so I don't get your point.

To the OP,
If you're good at maths, you should have no problems with physics. If you are bad at maths, you will struggle.

breadmonkey

daveym wrote:

i'd agree with this (well apart from all the 'I'm great I know what I am talking about comments').

You need very little maths skills for physics, none at all really past using the calculator.

You need maths understanding in order to do physics. I'm not saying that the maths side of it is traumatic but to say that it's an excercise in number crunching is misleading.

The guy

Beelzebub wrote:

If you are strong in Maths do it.
If you are in any way weak at Maths don't do it.

QFT

I do physics for the Lc and a good ability at maths is a great advantage.
Particularly algebra.

copacetic

breadmonkey wrote:

You need maths understanding in order to do physics. I'm not saying that the maths side of it is traumatic but to say that it's an excercise in number crunching is misleading.

well sure you do, but you don't have to be 'good' at maths to do well in physics. If you are average at ordinary maths you would be fine.

as for the 'engineers', are you saying you have seen a class on engineers who are poor at maths struggle
at physics because of it? What college was this that they all got into with poor maths skills?
If so their struggles in physics are by the by. You do need to be good at maths to do engineering. imo if you find honours maths at LC anyway difficult engneering wouldn't be for you, but thats a different argument..

kaalgat

I took up physics as an extra subject for the leaving cert 12 weeks before the actual exam, ordinary level obviously.

It's grand if you are willing do a good bit of studying and get a book like Less stress more success or something like that it's called. It's grand for getting you through the paper

Limerick Dude

breadmonkey wrote:

You're wrong. People who aren't good at maths struggle at physics. I've seen it at Leaving Cert level and in a class of would be engineers.

Doing applied maths makes physics a p!ss take so I don't get your point.

To the OP,
If you're good at maths, you should have no problems with physics. If you are bad at maths, you will struggle.

No man your wrong!
Im doing honours physics and ordinary level maths, im not the strongest in maths at all! But i find the calculations in physics really straight forward, all you need to know is how to use a calculator.

breadmonkey

Limerick Dude wrote:

No man your wrong!
Im doing honours physics and ordinary level maths, im not the strongest in maths at all! But i find the calculations in physics really straight forward, all you need to know is how to use a calculator.

Whatever. If you can understand it then good for you but Isuspect you haven't done the whole course. y/n?

Nehpets

The maths is physics is a joke. Once you know your formulae and you know when to use them it's just filling the numbers. Not exactly maths.

Note, I don't find physics easy OR remembeing all the formulae. But that's not exactly hard maths, it's more remembeing it.

ZorbaTehZ

You're wrong. People who aren't good at maths struggle at physics.

If you're good at maths, you should have no problems with physics. If you are bad at maths, you will struggle.

You need maths understanding in order to do physics.

Breadmonkey.
Do us a favour and go and decide what your stance is on this topic so we don't have to listen to your incoherent rambling any more.


4Xcut:

This is a complete fallacy, if you can re-arrange formulae and multiply by decimals then you should be grand on the maths side.

And yes i did maths, applied maths and physics for the leaving so i know what I'm talking about.

And no the fact that i did app. maths does not mean that i wouldn't know what i was talking about in relation to weaker maths students.

The best post in this thread and the most correct. All this crap about don't do physics if you're bad at maths is nonsense tbh.

kaalgat

Nehpets wrote:

The maths is physics is a joke. Once you know your formulae and you know when to use them it's just filling the numbers. Not exactly maths.

Note, I don't find physics easy OR remembeing all the formulae. But that's not exactly hard maths, it's more remembeing it.

Agreed. It's all about remembering the formulae. Not exactly maths

*lil fairy*

physics is brutal! the whole subjesct is makin me depressed atm in school, jst got my mocks bac 2day ndfailed miserably....nd i find d maths particularly hard! i dnt struggle realy wit maths bt i do ordinary level! nd i no u jst need to learn d formulae bt thats not easy d subject is hard 2understand!

breadmonkey

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

Breadmonkey.
Do us a favour and go and decide what your stance is on this topic so we don't have to listen to your incoherent rambling any more.

Spare me. Each part you quoted said the same thing or was along the same lines. If you can't understand that then you're going to struggle at life. (You seem to have Physics all sewn up so perhaps now it's time to focus on English). Seriously, why did you waste 30 seconds of your life posting that?

EDIT: I also find it hilarious that 4XCut thinks he knows that physics is easy because he did applied maths as well. I understand that it can be be difficult precisely because I did applied maths. You guys craic me up.

copacetic

breadmonkey wrote:

Spare me. Each part you quoted said the same thing or was along the same lines. If you can't understand that then you're going to struggle at life. (You seem to have Physics all sewn up so perhaps now it's time to focus on English). Seriously, why did you waste 30 seconds of your life posting that?

EDIT: I also find it hilarious that 4XCut thinks he knows that physics is easy because he did applied maths as well. I understand that it can be be difficult precisely because I did applied maths. You guys craic me up.

if it doesn't 'craic you up' too much, i'd still like to know about these would be engineers that don't know enough maths to do physics?

breadmonkey

daveym wrote:

if it doesn't 'craic you up' too much, i'd still like to know about these would be engineers that don't know enough maths to do physics?

They do know enough but aren't very confident and have troubling adapting what they know to problems they haven't seen before.

Michael Collins

I'd have to agree with breadmonkey here. I teach some engineers in UCD and while their maths knowledge itself may be quite good, a lot of them find it difficult to apply this to other subjects, where it might not be so obvious.

For example, a while ago I was trying to explain a curve with involved a quadratic equation...which they would have seen loads of times before, but because the question didn't explicitly mention that it was a quadratic (and it wasn't in terms of 'x'!), most of them hadn't a clue what it should look like. That's just one of many examples...

copacetic

Michael Collins wrote:

I'd have to agree with breadmonkey here. I teach some engineers in UCD and while their maths knowledge itself may be quite good, a lot of them find it difficult to apply this to other subjects, where it might not be so obvious.

For example, a while ago I was trying to explain a curve with involved a quadratic equation...which they would have seen loads of times before, but because the question didn't explicitly mention that it was a quadratic (and it wasn't in terms of 'x'!), most of them hadn't a clue what it should look like. That's just one of many examples...

but would you agree that you need to be good at maths to do leaving cert physics which is breadmonkeys stance on the main topic?

Funnily enough I also did engineering in UCD and first year physics was a piece of piss with little maths there either.

Michael Collins

daveym wrote:

but would you agree that you need to be good at maths to do leaving cert physics which is breadmonkeys stance on the main topic?

Funnily enough I also did engineering in UCD and first year physics was a piece of piss with little maths there either.

The current physics course has very little high level maths really, I mean compared to the old one which required you to prove a lot of the forumulas and be proficient with calculus, it's a lot simplier really. So good at simple maths yes (like solving simple quadratics, good at handling numbers etc), but would you have to be an A level student in honours maths?...No, not at all.

In general though, you'd rarely find an A1 physics student that wasn't good at honours maths, just because the skills involved in both subjects are quite similar, so it's hard to seperate the two appitudes in reality.

copacetic

Michael Collins wrote:

The current physics course has very little high level maths really, I mean compared to the old one which required you to prove a lot of the forumulas and be proficient with calculus, it's a lot simplier really. So good at simple maths yes (like solving simple quadratics, good at handling numbers etc), but would you have to be an A level student in honours maths?...No, not at all.

In general though, you'd rarely find an A1 physics student that wasn't good at honours maths, just because the skills involved in both subjects are quite similar, so it's hard to seperate the two appitudes in reality.

well i'd agree with that, it would seem a lot of people are put off physics by the general opinion you have to be good at maths which is a pity. Which is why I was posting on here tbh. I've tutored my little bro and some of his friends and with a little bit of study there is very little that is hard to understand in the physics course.

Unlike maths which some people just can't seem to get their heads around no matter how much they study. Having said that the current honours maths course is a lot easier than the one I did. I got the last year of the old one with the 10 part question 1, which was a right pain in the gonads. The current setup allows a lot more leeway in what is left in and left out in the revision.

Alanthroneus

breadmonkey wrote:

Whatever. If you can understand it then good for you but Isuspect you haven't done the whole course. y/n?

i did pass maths and higher level physics in the leaving certi did quite well in both of them. which means i have done the whole course with pass maths and now im in college studing science. so dont say that you cant do the physics course with pass maths because in reality its QED

ZorbaTehZ

Lemme waste another 30 seconds of my life by asking you which ability it is that I need to have to manage physics - is it that I need to be good at maths or that I need to simply have an understanding of maths?
Or wait, according to you that's the same thing.

I also find it hilarious that 4XCut thinks he knows that physics is easy because he did applied maths as well.

Please point out to me where 4XCut said that?
Maybe you need to understand how quoting work - or possibly it's that you just "struggle at life" in general.

Alanthroneus

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

Lemme waste another 30 seconds of my life by asking you which ability it is that I need to have to manage physics - is it that I need to be good at maths or that I need to simply have an understanding of maths?
Or wait, according to you that's the same thing.



Please point out to me where 4XCut said that?
Maybe you need to understand how quoting work - or possibly it's that you just "struggle at life" in general.

lol

Leidenfrost

part of my mock results were, a D1 in Higher maths and an A2 in higher physics.

Physics is easy if you want to know.
same with every subject, if you want to know and want to learn you will.

Schlemm

Hmm hoping I'm not butting in on a big argument here...so here's my 2 cents:

LC physics is a great subject. They've dumbed down the exam in recent years so that more people will do it...however, not everybody has realised this and still percieves it to be a tough subject, so there's not a huge uptake which can mean smaller classes as well as nicer exams!

You cover mechanics, heat, light, electricity, magnetism etc. and there is also an option q. for higher level students, I think it's either on particle physics (which is really interesting) or some other thing which I can't remember.

As long as you're getting above about a C1 in higher maths, you won't have too much trouble with LC physics. Maths was never my strongest and I got a B2 at higher level in my LC, but I got an A1 in physics. If you are any way good at visualising concepts in your head, the maths will often make sense logically (and often with a bit of hard work too!) if you can apply them to an actual physical concept which you understand.

With regards to the workload, yes this is a subject which requires a bit of effort and hard work because there's quite a bit of learning in it, eg, formulae, definitions, experiments, etc. and you may have to work hard at getting your head around some of the concepts. But it's a rewarding and challenging subject! Have a look at the exam papers www.examinations.ie

ZorbaTehZ

Schlemm wrote:

I think it's either on particle physics (which is really interesting) or some other thing which I can't remember.

Other option is Further Electronics (Transformers, Further Induction, Further Electromagnetism etc.) and idd, the particles option is so much more interesting.

lemansky

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

Other option is Further Electronics (Transformers, Further Induction, Further Electromagnetism etc.) and idd, the particles option is so much more interesting.

and easier unfortunately our teacher is obsessed with electricity,so even though a few of us do the particle option we're still forced onto studying it for revision tests....:mad:

Michael Collins

lemansky wrote:

and easier unfortunately our teacher is obsessed with electricity,so even though a few of us do the particle option we're still forced onto studying it for revision tests....:mad:

Boo Hoo, tests make you all better learners!

Spyral

do physics if you want to be a physicist something to do with space, electronics or such, engineering.

Also none of the maths involved is beyond what OL LC maths covers (lets face it if you are doing hons physics you prolly sholdnt be doing foundation maths)

nesf

breadmonkey wrote:

You need maths understanding in order to do physics. I'm not saying that the maths side of it is traumatic but to say that it's an excercise in number crunching is misleading.

You're making the mistake of not defining what level of maths is used here. The vague phrase "maths understanding" means very little and I think this is where you and other people are disagreeing. If a person can competently rearrange (simple) algebraic formulae and calculate their answers then they'll probably do fine in LC physics and these are pretty fundamental skills learnt at JC level by most people.

Honours LC maths (unless it's gotten a hell of a lot simpler in the past few years) requires a much broader range of mathematical abilities which is why you need to be more precise in your statements in that I could use the exact same statement you used to describe the gap between LC physics and the maths required in a physics degree and I think we'd agree that the two are very different things.

Mellor

You dont need to be great at maths to do physics.
You could easily do pass maths and honors physics.

But if you are a great maths student then physics will be very good for you, on one hand because of the maths involved, but also because of the fact that students that excel at maths do so because of the way they think, this thinking also makes physics easier to understand, nothing to do with maths, but the lateral thinking ability means that theory is understood easier.

but a poor maths student might have difficulty with some of te theory, not because of the maths involved, becauseing of the thinking. They could still pass the subject, but might be happier in a different subject.

People who were good at maths, in school were often good at engineering, physics, tech drawing (there is no maths there, just thinking that is similar), its how they work.

I knew people who were very bad at maths, but got good leaving certs because they were excellant at art, music and english

you can do any subject and get an A, but find the one thats best for you and you get the most As you can.

Fallen Seraph

From my experience physics isn't quite the normal LC subject. If you can sit down and understand the concepts that they're talking about then the whole subject will just sorta flow. Of course this understanding isn't everyone's thing. WRT to the maths I gotta agree with the people who say it isn't *too* taxing. And even if you do find it kinda hard it doesn't take up all the course.
That said, you would want a solid basic grip of maths.



(Also, apologies; I know this might be a little late; but I've been looking for somewhere to use this macro for SOO long)

pisslips

It's quite simple, you learn definitions, then you understand the relations, you see it in the experiments.
In the maths questions, you just need to understand the relations and you'll intuitively pick up the formulae with minimal(possibly non) study, you make sure you use all the information given to you and if the answer looks plausible, then it's correct.
In fairness they make the questions very straightforward.