How to Study Physics Effectively | Study With Me Physics Edition

okay let's talk about how to learn and study for physics let me very quickly preface this video though by saying that if you've got an exam in the next week or couple of weeks or even a month or so then don't use the techniques in this video I'll make another video in the future at some point explaining techniques that are very useful if you've got an exam very soon and what to do in that situation but this video is going to be talking about how to learn and understand the physics that you're learning hey everyone my name is path I make fun physics videos on this channel and for those of you that don't know I have a degree in physics as well as a masters both from the University of Cambridge I graduated in June 2018 and now it's time for me to get back into learning physics however I do not want to yet be doing this at a university level I don't want to be doing it in an academic setting is what I'm trying to say so yes I am getting back into learning physics over the next few months or so and I'll very quickly talk about that but if you're not interested in that bit if you're interested in the techniques that I'm going to be talking about then skip to this time stamp here go on skip no no no don't skip no haven't no listen Okay so yeah it's time for me to get back into learning physics again but not in an academic setting now what I mean by this is that when I'm studying physics at University I was introduced to a lot of Concepts I was taught a lot of physics I learned a lot of different techniques as well that helped me with my thinking with my critical thinking with my logical thinking all of that kind of stuff but the pace of the course was so quick that it never really got to appreciate and understand any physics with any great level of detail the course went really quickly at least for me it did it went far too quickly for me to get a sense that I was learning physics and enjoying physics it was more just a case of oh yeah this is really cool but we have to move on to this now and then this is really cool but we have to move on to this now and yeah so I want to take some time now that I've spent some time away from Academia just to just sit down and learn a bit of physics on my own now I have some of the lecture notes that were given to me by our lecturers um during my time at University and I'm going to be using those to go over a few courses so first things first I'm actually going to dig out those lecture notes so let's go do that now [Music] thank you okay so now that I've got my lecture notes out I've got a list of all the courses that I can go through so let's start looking at the techniques that I'm going to be employing over the next few months but very quickly why am I spending time learning physics again I'm not a student anymore and I'm not an academic either well it's because well two reasons firstly because I work as a video developer for an educational technology company which means I make videos explaining how to solve physics problems and explain different concepts as well so for that reason I need to know a decent amount of physics I need to be able to explain anything concisely and clearly but that's not why I'm really doing it I'm doing it because I miss learning physics basically but I want to do it on my own terms like I said I want to do it at my own pace I want to learn it properly and thoroughly so that's my reasoning behind this now let's get into the techniques that I'm going to be using over the next few months in order to understand physics as well as I can and by the way these techniques can apply to you as well if you're studying physics at any level GCSE a-level undergrad whatever it doesn't matter just as long as you don't have an exam to arise for in the near future you can use these techniques and hopefully they'll help you out so technique number one I'm gonna organize all the courses I have to go through into different areas of physics so quantum physics relativity classical Mechanics for example so on and so forth and then I'm going to start with a course that I really used to like at University complete that and then I'm going to move on to a course that I didn't like at all then once I've done that one I'm going to move back to a course that I liked and then flip flop between courses that I liked and didn't like liked and didn't like reasoning behind this is that the courses that I really enjoyed will keep me motivated and engaged and enjoying what I'm studying and the courses I didn't like will push my boundaries as a physicist I will become a better physicist if I learn how to tame courses that I was really bad at and remember by the way that this is all done in a spirit of sort of enjoying physics and that's really important to me because I quite like physics and it's my personal belief that you're not going to want to learn any more physics if you don't like the bloody subject so as a general point of advice for you do anything you can anything you know power to ensure that you keep enjoying physics as you study it now how are you going to apply this in your learning I'm not saying just study one course and then move on to a course that you don't like and then studying you can do this kind of thing on a day-to-day basis as well spend the first half of your day studying something that you really don't like and then spend the other half doing something that you do like this way in the morning when you're usually the freshest after a coffee or something spend time on the stuff that's really challenging to you and then towards the end of the day do stuff that you don't need telling twice to do and throughout this video I'm going to come back to the point about enjoying your physics about enjoying what you're learning and keeping that childish curiosity about I guess the universe anyway technique number two you know when you're studying physics you come across something that just doesn't make sense to you you just don't get it it's very easy to then spend a couple of hours couple of days even a couple of weeks thinking about that thing and until it makes sense to you or until you give up on it I don't have the time to do that now don't get me wrong since I've started work I've got a lot of this thing called free time I didn't even know this was a thing until I left University I have a lot of free time but I spend it doing a lot of different things those of you that follow this channel will know that I play badminton I write music I record my own music I hang out with friends I like to make videos for YouTube and so that takes up a lot of my free time this means that the time I have available to give to physics because it's not my priority outside of work is very minimal maybe a couple of times a week at most so when I get to the point where I get stuck on a problem where there's a step in a calculation that I don't understand I am going to limit myself to one hour spent on that thing thinking about it this way I have that one hour to think about it which in my opinion is a decent chunk of time but if I realize that I haven't understood that thing within the hour then I'm going to move on this is really important so that I don't get bogged down in what I'm doing and this will work for you as well now some of you watching this video will say well that's kind of a cop-out you're not learning that thing you're just sort of skipping past it well yes and no because that's where step three comes in but let me just finish explaining step two or technique number two or tactic number whatever I've called it number two let me just explain number two so yeah the whole point of technique number two is to not get bogged down in something is to find that balance between spending enough time thinking about something and not overdoing it and spending weeks and weeks thinking about one thing when you could have been learning so many other things this especially helps if there's a limited enough time that you have to give to studying physics which is true for everyone nobody's got 25 hours in a day to study Physics so that's technique number two now technique number three is where we address the shortcomings of technique number two if there's something that doesn't make sense consult the internet consult colleagues consult friends and yeah this is fairly obvious you know a lot of you will consult teachers when there's something that you don't understand but it's an important Point talking to other people can actually give you a very good understanding of a topic that you never understood before and the reason this is is because they will have ways of thinking about things that might work for you whereas the textbook that you're reading from or the teacher that you're learning from might have a way of thinking about a certain topic that doesn't work for you so you need to find the explanation that makes sense to you you need to find a way of thinking about it that clicks and a really good way to do this is to bounce ideas off other people now I know physicists have this Flack for being solitary people but trust me working with other people is probably one of the best things about science and about physics now the next point is that because I'm trying to challenge myself as a physicist I am going to be attempting a lot of the questions that I see in textbooks or in or in the notes that I have and again this might seem like an obvious point but it's an important one to make because the only way to further your knowledge about physics and your understanding of physics more importantly is to take the information that you've been given take the skills and the techniques that you've been given and then apply them to unfamiliar situations unfortunately when I was learning at University obviously I went through the questions that were given to us to do for supervisions and stuff like that but I never really got to go through the little questions in the textbook that said thought for the day we've made this assumption in the calculation that we've just done how valid is this assumption I never got to think about that kind of thing because the course like I said was very fast paced we just had to move on to the next bit so I'm going to take my time this time and actually go through that kind of stuff this way I will actually get a better understanding of physics and I recommend that if you've got the time to do something like that then please do it challenge yourself answer questions that you think I have absolutely no idea where to start and one way to find out where to start is to talk to other people so look at the previous technique okay and finally coming back to the spirit of enjoying my physics I am not going to put pressure on myself to get a certain course done in a specific amount of time or to know everything about that one particular course that there is to know no this is for fun I'm doing it because I like physics so there's no pressure on me to do anything and I know it's hard for those of you that are studying physics if you've got exams coming up even within the next year or two years because there's always the thing in the back of your mind saying that oh I have to learn this for the exam so that I can get good grades or whatever but just do it because you like it because that's the only way that you continue doing it so those are my tips for studying physics and if you end up using any of them and if you find them helpful then let me know in the comments down below tell me which tip was the most useful to you as well and I'm going to ask you my weekly question of the week before I go this week's weekly question of the week is going to be a very specific one related to academics when was the last time that you sat down and actually learned something academic because you wanted to because you enjoy it now normally my weekly question of the weeks are more sort of General points in terms of they could apply to Academia or they could apply to extracurricular activities that you do now this time is very specific related to your academics when was the last time you sat down and actually learned something because you wanted to not because there was a pressure on you to do well at school the University or college or because your parents wanted to because you wanted to tell me down in the comments below for me right now this is why I'm making this video so anyway that's my weekly question of the week before I go I'm just going to say please follow me on Instagram if you want to watch one minute explanations of physics Concepts I'd post that on there and if you want to read the worst physics jokes you've ever heard then follow me on Twitter as well also if you enjoyed this video then please leave a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel for more fun physics videos hit that Bell button if you want to be notified every time I upload and thank you so much for watching I will see you very soon [Music] foreign 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Channel: Parth G

Views: 331,451

Keywords: How to Study Physics, How to Study Physics Effectively, Study With Me, Study With Me Physics, Physics, Revision, Study Tips, Education, Parth G

Id: bZLKG43Qcps

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2019