Physics by yourself?

Mr. Rager

To cut a long story short, I am currently in 5th year and I'm thinking of starting the Physics LC course at home by myself.
Has anyone done this before/knows someone who was?
What difficulties could I meet while doing this?
Is it too late to start?

Thanks

ride-the-spiral

I'm almost certain you have to have a teacher sign off that you've done the experiments in order to take the exam.

Stalin and rugby

I did Physics on my own at home and am sitting the exam in June.

To be honest it was extremely difficult. I always wanted to understand everything perfectly so it was really tough. Some of the concepts are not explained well enough in the book so you'll probably end up spending a lot of time on wiki/online looking up explanations.

Saying that, it's not impossible. I am of average/below average intelligence so if you're a smart kid go for it! It's really rewarding and fascinating.

Good luck, if you ever need anything explained give us a shout I'll do my best :P

Chuchoter

ride-the-spiral wrote: »

I'm almost certain you have to have a teacher sign off that you've done the experiments in order to take the exam.

Thats only junior cert.

At this stage in the game I think you've left it way too late to be starting a reasonably difficult course like Physics, one which is also pretty long as courses go. Focus on your 6 major subjects and don't be taking time away from them

afrocod

I'm doing all the science's by myself at home and I'm sitting the exams in June and I only started in January. While it's difficult because I haven't got much time. It's very do-able.

The only thing is that it would be nice to physically run through the experiments instead of running mental models and trying to remember those.

**Timbuk2**

It's doable I'd say, if you are willing to work throughout next summer quite hard at it (it is a long course!) and find physics interesting!

As the previous poster said, it's a lot easier to remember experiments having seen them (often in physics class, we did the experiments ourselves in groups) than just reading a report of them in the book.

I found this online, youtube videos of students doing the LC experiments, which may help!: http://www.youtube.com/user/c4science

If you are studying in the book, and are stuck on a topic, you may find help here: http://www.khanacademy.org/ (scroll down to physics). Note this isn't based around the LC course, but is introductory in nature, just select whichever topic you think is relevant!

Also there's good summary notes on www.thephysicsteacher.ie
And as the textbook goes, if it's still the same one I used for my LC (2010) (Real World Physics, by Dan O'Regan), then it's quite a good one!