PHYC10005: Physics 1 Fundamentals

Practicals 25%
Ten weekly assignments (10 x 1.5% = 15%)
3-hour written examination in the examination period (60%)

Easy with the help of google and the option to practice until you get it right.

**This subject was compulsory for my major (Animal Health) / I have a love-hate relationship with Physics having dropped it in Year 11 thinking I'll never have to do it ever again. HAH.

So back to the point I made about me not really catching up with lectures. (I ended up only reading lecture slides)Physics had really dropped to the bottom of my priorities. I was spending all my time studying for other subjects that by the time it came to 2 days before the exam, I had my first uni burnout. Looked at the practice exam and just couldn't be bothered with them. I ended only actually completing 1 out of 11 of the past years (all by myself, no peeking at answers). The day of the exam, I had to wake up before dawn sit a 8:30am exam. At that point, I had completely given up. But, when I opened the exam paper to attempt the questions, my first thought was "Damn, this is easy". Now, I'm not saying that not studying for an exam is good but, I honestly was so surprised. I was expecting to be completely screwed over but I ended up being able to answer every question to an extent.

I definitely did not enjoy this experience. But I guess the exam made up for it. To whoever who attempts this subject, I wish you all the best. And if you're like me and don't have a choice, don't stress, you'll meet loads of people who are the same and you guys can become friends through the mutual hate for the pracs YAY. If you need more detailed advice, feel free to message me.

Yes, with screen capture.
** the lecturer does demonstrations during the lecture that you might not get to see if you watch at home

I went to the first few but then towards the end of the semester I just couldn't be bothered.
Some of the lecturers try to make it exciting with demonstrations and stuff which are funny to watch at times.

Yes, 11 past year papers, however for some of the older exams we were only provided short answers w/o the explanation

The worst part of the whole subject. Firstly, out of the 12 weeks in the semester, 8 weeks you'll have a Physics Prac. Compared to the 5 in Biol 10004 and 6 in Chem 10003, just that alone made a lot of people hate it so much. Including me. The Pracs are draining and most times the content of the Prac has not even been touched on in lectures. So, you go in knowing close to nothing and if your demonstrator wasn't great at explaining the concept, you and your partner(s) are on your own. This was what happened to me. My demonstrator was new and very inexperienced. My partner and I had to just refer to the handbook and try to work out how the concept worked. Having to do that AND physically do the experiment (which it tends to consist of multiple sections) AND write out a report AND draw diagrams AND print out results AND identify limitations etc. I dreaded each Prac and my scores started off pretty bad, but hey, it got better towards the end.

2 of 5

Textbook : Optional /
Green Handbook : Used for Pracs & Tutes (or you could just print them yourself) /
Blue Lab Book : They make you buy it to write your reports in.

They were okay. I attended most of them to catch up on stuff since I didn't really go to lectures.
I had Jame as my tutor, he was cool and funny. He does a short explanation at the start of the tute then let's us just do the exercises on our own. So if you want help with a specific question, ASK cos he doesn't explain any of them unless someone asked.
**the guy also baked us cookies one time, it was nice

3x 1 hr lectures & 1x 1 hr problem based per week,
8x 2.5 hr pracs & 10x weekly homework assignments throughout the sem

2019 Semester 1

One mark away from a H1

Weekly Assignments worth 15%, Practicals worth 25% and Exam worth 60%.

- Easy with the help of google

- Apparently it is similar to the VCE year 12 physics course and probably similar to the IB physics course too. Topics included Mechanics, Waves and sound, and Optics.

- Difficult. About the difficulty of those weekly problems from the tutorials.

Yes

I chose this subject without much thought. I chose physics for my IB course but dropped it within the first 6 weeks because I just couldn't understand physics and found it extremely boring but I somehow decided to do physics fundementals in hopes to gain some basics. As expected, my thoughts on the subject still hasn't changed, I stopped going to lectures after the first 3 lectures and never went back to the tutorials after the first one. All the physics I learnt for the whole semester was from the practicals (I had to read about them in the textbook before hand). The so-called assignments are sets of online questions from this site called 'mastering-physics' which you can pretty much just google to find the answers. So basically, I wasted the whole semester not learning anything although I gained nearly full marks for my internal assessments. (And so when exams came, I was so screwed it wasn't funny )

About 19 days before my physics exam, I finally stopped procrastinating and started by counting the number of freaking topics from the textbooks we had supposedly studied and OH MY! there were so many that I panicked and cried (I know, its my own fault, no ones to blame for my laziness...) There were about 16 relevant chapters from the textbook that I had to cover in the 18 days I had left. Everyday I would read the whole chapter and do most of the end of chapter questions (about 80 per day...crazy, I know) until the last few days where I starting giving up and only did the 'suggested-problems' listed on the LMS. Despite the study, on the last day when I did past papers I still couldn't do like nearly half of the questions.

On D-DAY I went into the exhibition theatre barely prepared having only just learnt the content in like 2 weeks and a bit. The exam had the same format as it did in all the previous years with most of the topics covered. There were about 20% explanation questions which were similar to the ones in past papers but only 'explanation required' was shown in all of the past papers . But I guess I managed to pick up most of my marks here because I used my pro-bullshitting skills for these. You just have to find an equation from the list of formulas provided and use it to explain the effect or whatever. I attempted most of the questions (about 80%) even if an answer couldn't be found and left the exam an hour early.
In the end, I received an H1 for my grade but this is definitely a fluke. This subject is not for those who like to slack off like me. If you do slack off, you will have a terrible life in the month leading up to the physics exam (I had a few mental breakdowns while studying for physics and my other subjects - Bio, Chem and Jap5). My tip for those who decide to challenge this subject is to practice application questions and conceptual questions regularly, use the textbook instead of wasting time listening to the lecturers - you can find answers to them by googling the name of the textbook, and finally start studying early

Yes, quite a lot of them however, no full solutions, especially for the ones before 2011.

- Easy if you read the textbook before hand and ask the demonstrator for help as much as possible.

1.5/5

R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach- Essential!

3 lectures per week, 1 tutorial per week, 8 x 3hour long practicals, 10 x Weekly online assignments

2014 Semester 1

H1

- 8 Practicals (25%)
- 10 Online Weekly Assignments (10%)
- 1 Task for Written Submission (5%)
- End of Semester 3 Hour Exam (60%)

I know this will be the fourth review, but I just want to hammer in the point.
Recommendations (what worked for me)
1) BUY OR AQUIRE THE BOOK (very very very important)
2) Read every word in chapters 1 through 10 and chapters 14 through 19 chronologically as the semester progresses.
3) In every subchapter there are problems they work through - do every single one of them and make your you understand the idea.
4) At the end of each chapter there are plenty of questions (try to do at least 50% of those question) - if the asnwer for a question is not in the back, its on google.
5) Do all the tutorial questions (posted on LMS)
6) As final exam time gets near (4 to 5 weeks prior to SWOTVAC) start doing all the past exams.
7) A couple of formulas are not given in the formula sheet and some formula are given, but in forms that I didn't like (e.g. doppler effect and lens equation) - make a formula sheet of all formula that are not on the formula sheet
Don't go to tutorials (elaborated below), use the time productively
9) Lecture notes are useless, don't use them as your notes. Notes are not really necessary, but if you want some make them yourself.
10) Use khanacademy.org if the textbook doesn't not explain a particular concept well. Then try other websites.
Note that I got (equivalent to) a study score of 29 in high school physics, which is a very poor mark. So I think my strategy did work.

Lectures
The first half of the course is on particle physics and is given by Martin Sevoir. It covers kinematics, dynamics of one dimensional motion, two dimensional motion and rotational motion, orbits/ gravity, elasticity, momentum/ impulse and energy/ work. I went to the first 9 lectures. Chapters 1 through 10 of Knight's textbook. They started of easy and understandable, but progressively worse. Eventually I stopped going to the lectures altogether. It wasn't anything personal with Dr. Sevoir, but rather his style didn't resonate with me and as I understand lots of other people as well. However I suspect with most other people stopped going to the lectures they weren't doing much to compensate and that is where a lot of frustration for people started.

Unfornately Chris Chantler was much worse. He spoke to fast, didn't explain concept and had a strange interpretation of audience participation. I went to a couple of his lectures, tried to watch a few more, but it didn't work out. As I understand he is quite a good physicist, but I think his capabilities supersedes that of physics fundamental students. His lectures covered simple harmonic motion, wave mechanics, sound, light as a wave, light as a particle and optical instruments (application of properties of light).

Tutorials
The tutorials were less helpful than the lectures. We sat on a table and tried to solve some questions. After which the 'tutor' (a physics graduate student) would solve it on the board. My particular tutor seemed to solve the questions in the strangest ways, very unhelpful. The attendance went downhill pretty fast. All in all I went to about 5 tutorials.

Practicals
My Mark: 94%
Each practical is out of 14. 4 marks given for 4 online pre-lab questions. 10 marks given by the demonstrator. By a great stroke of luck after my first practical the demonstrator changed. This was a very helpful situation because the worst thing in the course is the practicals. Firstly there are way too many of them - 8. Bio has 5 and chem has 6, physics fundamentals has far too many. Secondly they are very hard, especially the last few. Everyone just stares at each other blankly when trying to answer the questions. I would recommend trying to attempt the questions before going to lab.

Weekly Assessments
My Mark: 89%
This was outsourced to a company called "Mastering Physics," who provide online physics tests for a lot of American universities. They have some good content so I would recommend looking them up. The tests were pretty fair in my opinion. A lot of people got greater than 100%. There are hints available on the question page. My problem was I forgot one of the tests and nearly forgot a couple more. They are due usually by 11:00 pm every Friday so make sure you do before. They can take an hour or so.

Task for Written Submission
My Mark: 78%
This consisted of 4 questions to be answered qualitatively. For us it was from Marin's section. I would say write the first thing that come to your head, don't stress to much. Don't write too many words (500 words for 4 questions should be fine). It will be some sort of application question.

Final Exam
My Mark: 86% (reverse calculated)
I thought the final exam was quite fair. It was out of 180 marks (1 mark per minute). Consisted of about 20 questions (9 or so marks each), 10 question from Martin's section and 10 questions from Chris' section. It covers almost everything top to bottom. The questions were not particularly hard. 3 hours is sufficient to complete it. There will definitely be a projectile motion questions and there definitely will be a dynamics questions, every single past paper had it. Those are pretty easy to practise for, knowing that. The pattern of the exams reamins the same, so I would say get used to the format used in the past papers. In fact there was a repeat for one for one fo the questions.

For GAMSAT Takers
This is pretty comprehensive and surprisingly coherent with the topics assessed in GAMSAT, except the chapters Electricity and Magnetism are not covered in this course. This is as good as it will get for a physics course for the GAMSAT (minus electricity and magnetism). They even throw in a bit of application, such as ears, eyes and ultrasound. Not a bad option if you have never done physics and require it for the GAMSAT.

Overall CommentsThis subject can turn out to be a nightmare. There are something done quite poorly, like number and type of practicals and style of lecturing. However with this subject if you put in the hours you will receive the marks. If you cruise through the semester you will end up with at least 80% in the practical/ assignment part of the course. Getting 80% in the exam means losing a maximum of 30 marks, that three full questions. So H1 is completely possible if you follow my recommended steps. Lastly don't do this subject if Physics has no use to you, so if it is not a prerequisite or you don't need it for the GAMSAT, I would recommend staying away from it.

Yes, with screen capture.

Martin Sevior, Christopher Chantler

Yes, 5 exams provided. With solutions to all, but not full explanations.

3.5 out of 5

- R Knight, B Jones and S Field, College Physics: A Strategic Approach, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2010. (MUST)
- Practical Manual Available from the Co-Op (PDF Available on LMS, but I would recommend that you buy it)

- 3 one hour lectures per week
- 8 three hour practicals scattered thorough out the semester; each practical has a pre-lab (approximate 20 minutes) associated with it
- 1 one hour tutorial per week (not compulsory)
- 1 assignment per week (minus the first two weeks) - will take approximately one hour.

2013, Semester 1

H1 (88)