Tips for Studying Physics?

It sounds like you have really good study habits, which is good. Keep doing what you are doing, but you should definitely talk to the teacher. My grandpa is a physics professor, and he loves it when students who are struggling come to him for help because it shows that they are trying. You say you have no problems with the assigned problems? How are the assigned practice problems compared to the test? Maybe ask if he can give you more practice problems that force you to think more critically. Does your teacher have office hours where you can go ask questions? If so, take advantage of that. Don't be afraid to ask him questions whenever you don't understand something.

Also, do you know anybody in the class? Study groups can be really helpful for some people (as long as people don't get too distracted when you are supposed to be studying). Sometimes your peers can explain something in a way that is easier to understand, because they talk on your level. Sometimes teachers talk above their students because a concept that seems simple to them may be harder to grasp for those who are just learning it. Also I have found that it really helps me to explain a concept to someone else. Whenever I study with friends and they ask me a question, explaining it to them helps reinforce my knowledge. Or if I can't fully explain the concept, it revels the gapes in my understanding.

I hope some of this is helpful. Good luck!

 

I've always been pretty good in physics and I'm getting an education degree. I might be able to help out.

Firstly, I agree with Crassus. Professors usually prefer students who ask them a lot of questions. It shows your trying and sometimes they will be a little more lenient in grading your work.

There might be a physics study room at your college. If there is, there should be times with older students there specifically to help.

Here's a few questions just to try to narrow down where your having issues.

What sort of questions do you tend to get wrong on tests? Are they word problems that require you to give mathematical answers? Application of theories and laws to explain what happens?

Do you find yourself either forgetting or mixing up theories, laws, or equations?

Could it just be nerves on being tested? Perhaps you made a few mistakes on the first test and became to worried to do well on the others.

for me I find that writing down the general form of the equations I think I'm going to use on a problem and rearranging them to solve for the missing variable before even worrying about specific values pretty helpful. Doing this reduces a lot of problems to simply plug and chug.

Lastly, here is a link to some problems with explanations on how to solve them:

AP Central - Critical Thinking Questions in Physics Part 1

Perhaps you could point out some that are similar to what your struggling with?

 

Learn to juggle. I'm serious. If that's too frustrating, try balancing things, sliding things across the floor, bouncing a superball, experimenting with homemade pulleys and levers... whatever sounds like fun.

Some people need to experience physics in a very concrete and obvious way. If you're otherwise smart, trying hard, and you're still having trouble with physics, you are likely to be such a person. Once you get plenty of hands-on physics experience on a basic level, you may turn out to be really good at it.

 

There was one engineering class in college in which I was doing poorly. I never attended class and didn't do a lot of the homework. When the final exam came around, I hadn't read like half the book. So what I did was *memorize* every example problem in the entire book, and worked them repeatedly until they only took seconds.

On the final exam, almost every problem was only a slight variation on the example problems in the book. I blazed through the exam and was the second one finished. Ended up pulling decent grade in the class, even though I never found out what my grade on the test was. Had to have been close to 100% (I needed it.)

Looking back 25 years on that lesson, ignoring the not-attending-class part, I think my strategy was sound. Even though we stress learning concepts in class, and supposedly disdain memorization, the truth is that our intellect has no facts to operate on without having memorized an awful lot of them. It's quite amazing how smart we become when we know a lot.

More than likely, most of the problems on your test use techniques that are described in your book, and if you have absolute mastery of those techniques, then the problems on the test will practically solve themselves. Let me stress, don't just understand the solved problems in the text, master them, and memorization is a good first step.

 

Having taken many math and physics courses, I can help you out with this one... It's not about knowing the formulas or simply reading and copying notes... and it's not even about being able to do a sample problem.

You need to read, reread, and breathe the definitions and examples you see in class, on the homework, and in the textbook. For some people, it clicks instantly, and for others, you have to do the aforementioned.

Start with the definitions and equations. Before reading the next sentences in your book or notes, think about what they mean. Think about the implications, and what would happen if they weren't true. Try to come up with your own problems. Then, when you study the problems in the book... look at what they are asking for... Compare each example in the same section, and see if there is some commonality between them. Look for patterns of the authors' thought process.

I hope this helps. This is how I studied more abstract math in my undergrad. It works for any class that requires a lot of critical thinking.