Curriculum

[grayfalcon89]

Hi,

 

I recently borrowed a book from local library for physics. It's called College Physics 2nd Edition by Raymond A Serway, Jerry S Faughn. I want to start studying this independently but I have no clue on how to approach it (i.e. where to start..). My official physics class is next year but I want to start early so I can get really good grades on the class. What would be good order of concepts that I need to learn?

 

P.S. I didn't have physics before and I'm only a high school student. But I take calculus now and manage to score 100% in it so I guess I'm pretty decent at math.

 

Thank you very much for your help!

[5614]

So you haven't done physics before, but I assume you've done science (which is part biology, part chemistry and part physics).

 

If you look at your book do you understand any of it? If so just start at the beginning.

 

I'm not really sure what you want here. How much do you know? Do you just want to know where in the book to start reading or do you want to know what topic of physics (outside the book) is good to start with? Well that really depends on how much you know.

[Klaynos]

Most texts will be in a pretty sensible and good order to start with, so I second the "start at the beginning" statment made by 5614

 

I'd also suggest, if you really want to get to grips with it, not turning the page untill you understand most/all that is written on that page, which may take alot of time. But if you're doing it in preperation for a course next year you might want to jsut ignore that and cover it really quickly... :s

[ed84c]

Well what i did was;

 

1. Buy some interesting physics books (i.e. Pop Science books) they're interesting & they will teach you a lot of stuff.2

 

2. Download the specification of the course your doing (get the right exam board...) that usually tells you what you need to know.