Solutions To Homework Assignments Chapter 3: Fill & Download for Free

Wheewwww…this is gonna be a long one, and I apologize. There’s a lot of trauma here.If you’ve done engineering at WVU in the last 30 years, there is no question. No debating. No pondering needed.If you are a WVU Statler alumnus, you already know the answer, and you should probably leave now to avoid remembering the pain.MAE460. Introduction to Automatic Controls, by Marcello Napolitano.Affectionately referred to as “Napy”This guy is probably the closest thing that I would refer to as evil in a casual sense. He was not at all evil in the way that Hitler was evil, but I just can’t really find any other word for it.The pain this man inflicted into students was just unbelievable.As indicated by the number, 460, this class is supposed to be a 2nd semester senior level class. One of the last you should take before graduating.But it was frequently recommended that you try to take it the summer before your senior year, or in your 1st semester of senior year in case you need to take it a 2nd…or 3rd time to pass.The most unfortunate part is that the material itself really wasn’t that difficult, compared to our journey through the engineering path. It really was just kinda inline with the steadily increasing difficulty of engineering stuff. Like going from 1st grade to 2nd, to 3rd grade.Like, when you would read about the concepts of Automatic Controls on wikipedia or scholarly sources, it just made sense. It was pretty simple stuff, actually.But somehow, this man made it into literal rocket science. He made EVERYTHING so much harder than it had to be.I’m having trouble finding the words, but this man ‘cranked it up to 11.’ In every possible way.As I’m trying to write this, I’m literally having flashbacks of anxiety, anger, depression, fear and concern for my classmates.See, I was lucky. I worked through school and dragged my feet through community college. So I transferred into WVU as a 22 year old, and turned 25 during his class. I had time to develop tough skin, out in the real world. I had much more emotional and mental maturity than my 21 year old self did.I kid you not, if I was in his class as a ‘regular college student’, at 21 years old, I would have probably gone home and cried daily or weekly and likely dropped out of WVU in my last semester, 15 credits short of my mechanical engineering degree.And I’m a “tough guy”. I bust my knuckles working on cars, I climb in and cut down trees for my landscaping business, I’ve had rough break ups, I grew up in a rough part of town, I’ve studied personal development and mental techniques and communication methods extensively. I have experiences/situations weekly that some of my peers would think is just a bad dream. I’ve had drunken people yell in my face, getting covered in their spit as an 8 year old. I’ve been hit from the back on a motorcycle, gone sliding into traffic, thinking I was going to get run over by a car while sliding on the road. Like, whatever you can throw at me, it’s fine. It might be uncomfortable, and might be unfair, and it might suck, but just ‘grin and bear it’, right?I’m very engineering minded. I see things in ‘black and white’ (much to the anger and annoyance of some of my ex-girlfriends :/Things are what they are. If you can fix it, no reason to stress, if you can’t fix it, then it is what it is. Accept it.In a job interview, I would blow 9 out of 10 of my classmates out of the water.But this man nearly destroyed me. For his own enjoyment, sometimes I think.And he wasn’t ‘picking on’ me or anything. This is just how he ran his class.I’ll give you some examples and details.So, first of all, understand that most students are taking 4–6 classes during this time. So still taking a full course load, complete with obligations and time commitments for those classes. Homework, class time, studying for exams, etc. Maybe some students are taking an elective or two, but I was taking 5 classes, all of which were legitimate core classes with real work involved.He assigned weekly homeworks that regularly took 10–15 hours.I had heard this prior to taking his class. I thought it was some weird joke or over exaggeration.It’s not.The packet of your homework assignment you turn in should be at least 25 pages, often more. Some students even turned in their homework assignments in binders.This is a weekly homework assignment of mine:Meanwhile, we have homework from 4 other classes to do as well.Late homework was absolutely not accepted. No exceptions. Class started at 11am. If you turned in your homework past 11:05, he would remove it from the pile.Even if your mom died 3 days prior, and you went to his office to explain, he would say “sorry, no exceptions.”The homework itself really wasn’t that difficult on a conceptual level, but it had to be formatted perfectly. This was really the time-suck. Most of it was programming to yield a proper graph of the solution. Each graph had to be specifically titled, each axis labeled and scaled correctly. The graph had to then be inserted into the Word document, carefully formatted within the page, and then had to write out the parameters of each problem.Most of the lines would be something like this:This is a screenshot of one of the Word docs I turned in for homework. Each problem has like 7 different possible outcomes based on a specific range of inputs, K. So you have to write the script for the problem, run it, and product an output graph. Then you repeat this for each range of “K values”.Then copy/paste the graph - WITH LABELS! - into Word, and write the captions.Do you know how annoying and disorienting it is constantly switching back and forth between superscript and regular script on your 25th page of homework at 2am?He gave out his own packets for each chapter. I will give him credit that he was very well organized, but the packets desperately lacked explanation of concepts and methods.He went through and made his own material for each chapter.So, weekly, you received a packet like this:Some of them are just a few pages. Most of them are 25–35 pages thick. Sometimes you would get 2 in the same class period.They were kind of neat, except the explanations sucked. He developed his own terms and abbreviations that you couldn’t search for online. Abbreviations he never explained, or wrote out in full, so you didn’t even know how to search for it in different terms. Several times I wondered for weeks “what does that even mean?!” tearing through the textbook desperately trying to figure it out. Only for it to hit me like a dump truck weeks later reading MIT’s educational material posted online. “OHHHHH! That makes so much more sense! It’s that simple?! Why did he make it so hard???”And his quizzes were literally meant to beat you down. They were all unannounced. He took “pop quizzes” to the nth degree. We had our first quiz in the 3rd day of the semester. We had no idea how he did things.The quiz was on the material that the 1st homework assignment was to cover, BUT that homework assignment was not yet due, so we had no obligation to have mastered it yet, as things would normally go.He didn’t care. POP QUIZ, he said.We’re all caught off guard. “A quiz on what…? We haven’t done anything yet”He passes out the quiz at the very beginning. We’re trying to slowly and carefully read through it, trying to make sense of this brand-new-to-us material, that we barely learned the day before.8 minutes, on the dot, passes and he says “time’s up!”The entire class, collectively, frantically looks up and around in confusion. Is this real? Is he serious?Most of us had barely made it past the 1st page.I admit, the problems were actually quite easy, but the environment and conditions were horrid and set up to fail you. The amount of time he gave was laughable.Surely this isn’t how things are done. He must just be punishing people who skip class.Oh yeah, he passed around an attendance sheet…every single class. If you missed more than 4 signatures, he automatically failed you.He passed back our quizzes to be picked up in our mailboxes. We retrieve them and see our scores.REALLY? He gave me a 1? What’s even the fucking point?In most classes, if you completely bomb a test or quiz, the professor will at least throw you a bone. Maybe give you a 30% if you were horrible, or maybe a 50% if you at least wrote down relevant formulas and had some coherent thoughts written down. Obviously, a 50% is still failing, but it at least gives you the chance to improve yourself and salvage your grade into passing status, maybe a high D or low C.Most professors want to fail you if you deserve it, but have no interest in “crushing” you or being unnecessarily mean.The next class, he stops talking about the material about 12 minute early, and he jokes that most of the quizzes were littered with scores of 0 or 1…out of 150.If you have not seen yet, please visit your mailbox.Okay.QUIZ!And we had ANOTHER quiz. I’m not fucking kidding.The same deal. Except he was ‘generous’ and gave us 2 extra minutes.We’re tired, we’re defeated, we have no idea what’s going on. We thought we were safe, paying our blood toll on the slaughter of quiz 1, just hoping we can double down on the homework due next class and actually understand what he’s talking about.Quiz 2, I got a 32/100. Improvement, right?After this point, we were shaking in our boots every class. By 10:57, every student was glued to their seat, all their pencils out, eraser, absolutely convinced today was the day he was going to swing the bat all the way instead of stopping right before your head and tickling it against your ear while laughing at the tears rolling down your cheeks. “What’s wrong? I’m not gonna hurt you!” While you’re still bleeding from the last hit.And every single class, he walks in at 11:01, holding a bin against his hip. A clear, plastic storage bin. Full of papers.What’s in the bin? Are they quizzes? Homework assignments? Material packets?And he stands there. Talks for a few minutes. Jokes with us about the weather, about the sports team.Then he sets the bin down on the table. Opens it up. We’re all dreading what’s inside.He takes his time. No rush.He pulls a stack out, and tells the front row to pass it around. You still don’t know what it is until the stack gets passed to you.And every class, we sigh a sigh of relief when it’s not another quiz.But every class…we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.Every quiz is unannounced. And now we know they would be at the beginning, or the end. So even if he doesn’t pass a quiz around in the beginning, we’re still not safe.Can you imagine this? Trying to legitimately focus on and learn the material while you’re constantly scared shitless that an impossible quiz is coming your way? It’s September. You’re supposed to graduate December 21st. Your parents already booked the hotel. And this class, this man, holds all the power if you’re gonna walk or not. And it all falls on these quizzes.ANOTHER failed quiz?! Is it even possible for me to pass anymore??I saved everything I ever got related to his class. I promise you, every single paper in this bin is from his class. A one-semester undergraduate level class. NOT a phd class, or master’s or anything else.Quizzes, homework assignments, tests, his own packets he gave out.I’ve only kept it to use one day for scrap. I hate to waste that much paper.So we only have those 2 quizzes in the beginning of the semester, then days and weeks pass. No more quizzes. Just homework assignments.And then the 1st exam comes. And it’s like the quizzes, but 5 times worse. Each test is 5 problems, which would normally take 20–25 minutes each to do carefully, if you had perfect conditions.You know, a properly air conditioned room, peace and quiet, no stress or anxiety. Just casually doing a problem, like some homework practice. And a few minutes to re-read the problem and check your work.Here’s the thing: we had precisely 42 minutes for each test. In a classroom with 80 other people. Every seat was filled. We had a writing platform roughly the size of a small cutting board.I believe this is the exact classroom that I had his class in. You can see the writing platforms (the pale piece of wood near the arm rest, stowed away in the picture) for each chair.People are sniffling, coughing, breathing heavy. People frantically erasing utter nonsense that they wrote, but can’t figure out why. Up to 3am studying for the test, but had test for another class at 8am that day.And the 35 page homework assignment was due.So what choice did you make? Did you study for the exam? Did you spend 12 hours on the homework that you can’t turn in late - an assignment that barely prepares you for the test? Did you choose to study for your other class instead?He says “time’s up” and you’re literally in disbelief.We’re going to split the exam into 2 parts and finish it next class, right…???Nope. What ya see is what you get.So you turn in your exam, barely done with problem 2, even after you’ve scribbled your pencil faster than you have in years.No way. This is impossible.This was exam 2, I believe.So we’re freaking out. A busy crowd of students talking after class.How did you do #3?Did you finish???What’s up with this guy?And then you find out someone in class got a 94% on the exam. You ask them how. And they just casually say “I got old exams from a friend who already took this class”.And then it hit me.It’s all just rigged. The only way to pass is to already know exactly what’s coming.Very next class after test #1,“QUIZ!”You don’t understand how close I was to having a teacher-student standoff at that very moment. Taking a stand as an older, more mature adult in a sea of defenseless teenagers.“Why are you doing this? What is it you’re trying to accomplish? Do you understand this is a horrible way to run a class? Do you know how many studies there are saying that pop quizzes are a horrible and completely ineffective form of learning?”But I didn’t. I just closed my eyes and felt the bat smash into my temple for the 4th time.Homework #2 was passed back in our mailboxes that morning, picked up before class.“What’s the point?” I thought, utterly defeated. An assignment I spent 8 hours on, but new I should have put 12 in. I thought I’d get a 70%, take my lickings, and move on. I had other assignments due. Remember what I said about those graphs needing to be properly labeled? This is the punishment that makes you never forget or say ‘eh I’ll only lose a few points’. A 65-point deduction on a 130-point assignment. Not too shabby.There was no rubric or criteria provided. We have no idea how we’re graded, and only find out after the fact.It’s okay though. I check the syllabus again, and homework is only 10% of our final grade. Quizzes are only 15%, so those barely matter, right?And the remaining 75%? All exams, baby.No labs. No credit based on participation. No research papers. No show-and-tell projects. Nothing. Nothing that would actually show our real-life grasp of the material. Just these impossible tests.Oh, well that’s not exactly true. We are graded on class attendance, but not like in an extra credit way. More like for each class we miss, 2% is subtracted from our final grade.And being more than 5 minutes late is considered an absence. So there’s that. I’m not sure about you, but that last bit definitely helped me sleep better at night.So it’s about 1/3 of the way through the semester, and I’m SHOOK. Like, I’m fucked up. I can’t think straight. I can’t figure out which way is up. I can’t focus on any other classes. My mom is calling me twice a week “the hotel reservations are still good, right?”.I calculate my grade in the class based on my returned assignments. I had like a 36% going into exam 2.I’m fucked. I’m screwed. I’m dead in the water. Even if I manage to somehow pull some miracle 100% out of my ass on the next 2 exams and the final, best case scenario is like a 73% in the class.So I go talk to him. I was extremely mature and level headed about it. I tell him how messed up his class is making me. I say how I’m not alone.I was VERY careful to not accuse him of anything. I very carefully say things like “I’m not sure if you are aware, but some of your behaviors are causing us lots of anxiety. The pop quizzes, for example.” Stuff like that.Kinda like that ‘Dutch Uncle’ thing. Like I wouldn’t say that you’re intentionally causing the students’ anxiety level to go off the charts, but SOMEBODY might say that.At this point, I was spending so much time on his class, I started to fail other classes. I hadn’t done laundry in 2 weeks. I kept buying shitty overcooked chicken tenders from the school shop because I hadn’t gone grocery shopping in weeks. I was on campus 13 hours a day. I went to the gym maybe 1 day a week, down from my usual 4–5 times.I was a wreck.“Like, for example, your class is tough, and - don’t get me wrong! - I respect that. I know it’s very important material, and we have to know it. We shouldn’t just be given a free pass, a rubber stamp. - but, like, my mom is calling me weekly asking if I’m still going to graduate. Is there any chance for me at this point? I know it’s my fault, and it’s up to me, but is it even possible?”Totally kissing his ass in hopes to avoid it turning into some weird fight how I’m somehow accusing him of XYZ. (Some of these professors are on some ‘power trip’ nonsense).And he says “I write it clearly in the syllabus that I will not be held responsible if you do not graduate. I say that I will not give you any special treatment due to that. Look again.”So I pull out my syllabus, and it clearly says that on page 3. He’s right.“As far as you passing the course, I cannot guarantee anything, but I would not advise you drop at this point, premature of the ‘last drop date’. “I ask him what the deal is with all the pop quizzes. Why are they ALL unannounced? Why do you not tell us about a quiz in advance? What’s the point?He says “I do have announced quizzes. They are called TESTS.”We talk about how there’s not enough time for the tests. He shrugs and says other students seem to manage. “I do not give special treatment”.He’s referring to the students who already have the answers from the old tests they’ve gotten from friends.I bring that up, too. He says “nothing I can do about it.”He then goes into some weird form of trying to cultivate sympathy from me toward him - he uses this phrase “I’m like a train without a station”.“I write textbooks with practice problems at the end. Within 6 months, the answer key is hosted on a piracy website, free for all. I write exams, and they get passed around the students. I am on a never-ending mission to write new problems because the demand for the answer key is so strong. I can never stop. I have no station to pull into. No chance to rest.”And I’m screaming in my head - DUDE! YES! BECAUSE OF THE WAY YOU SET YOUR SHIT UP. You set it up with 100% emphasis on scribbling down the correct answer as fast as possible with no actual verification if the student understands the concept!Just like a game show. Regis Philbin doesn’t give a shit if I know how the big bang happened as long as I can utter the phrase “the big bang” when the $64,000 question comes up asking about it.Our meeting is over.If you don’t know, the last drop date is the absolute last day that you can officially ‘drop’ a course without taking an F in the class. If you drop before that day, it is marked as a W for withdrawal, but does not have a grade attached. If you drop after, your grade is marked as a F and it is averaged into your GPA.This grading mechanism is taken into account when forming a strategy on whether to drop a class or not, because there are penalties both ways.And he gives me a few *wink wink* type of comments. Some professors beat you up in class, to give you a tough skin, but then you pull through with a B. Like they over-challenge you, so that when you come back to down the proper level of difficulty, you’re suddenly over-prepared.Sort of like, you train like an Olympic athlete for a casual, neighborly 5k marathon.So I decide to tough it out. Because, if I drop it to retake later, then I cannot graduate, at all.Fuck it. If I fail, then at least I stuck it through to the end.And test 2 comes. It’s even more of a slaughter than the 1st. The day before in class, he claimed it was shorter and easier than test one. “The hardest is behind you”.Yeah, well that was a fuckin’ lie.And test 2 was given ON the drop day. So you did not receive your score until after the drop day. All you had was your feeling of how you did to reflect back on.I stuck it out. The next class, I pick up my test 2, and I got a 26/100. Even worse than the 1st test.I walk into class, just furious at this point. Ready to cuss the guy out in front of class for jerking us around like this. Making jokes about it. Joking about how we’ve “lost brain cells” due to drinking too much beer at campus football games.He even spent 5 minutes on the chalkboard, calculating how many brain cells you would lose if you drank 3 beers per day for all of your college years.It was quite odd. Then he made ‘brain cell’ jokes for the rest of the semester.He then spent another 15 minutes berating the class, “what’s the deal?”He ‘rhetorically’ asked 10 times over. “What’s wrong, guys?? I go over the material. I give you homeworks. I give you packets. Whats the problem?”I say ‘rhetorically’ because he asked it several times, pretending he wanted someone to speak up, but we all knew better. We knew he knew. He’s been here for 30 years. He knows. We’ve heard the tall tales of his existence in the hallways, heard horror stories from older students. So had he.Other professors used to be students of his. They know. They all know. Faculty knows. The administration knows.He knows exactly what he’s doing.His reviews on http://RateMyProfessor.com don’t hold back.His end-of-year student evaluations are not kind.My complaint against him to the department chair was not a surprise.I was venting to another classmate about it. She said she cried in his office right before. Not even on purpose as a manipulation tactic. She just couldn’t pack up fast enough to leave the room before busting out in tears.She already had a job lined up, and had straight A’s her entire college career except this class, which she might fail and not be able to graduate over.I’ll tell you about exam #3 then wrap this up.So, apparently I have A.D.D.I recently self-diagnosed, but never associated myself with someone who had that disorder. I just hated studying. I would much rather work on cars than bury my head in a textbook for 8 hours. I don’t even think that’s natural for humans anyway.I’d only been officially diagnosed and medicated for ~6 months prior to this class. I decided I had to use every tool and trick I’ve got, short of cheating. I got to the Student Services department and get approved for accommodations: extra time on tests, and a quiet environment.So I got anywhere between 1.5x and 2x time on tests and quizzes.The next quiz, I get 100%, bringing my average up to like a 16%. Unfortunately, that was the last quiz of the semester.Test #3, I end up getting like 2 full hours. It was insane. I was in a private room.I did it all. I went and got a stack of old exams, and went through them. Literally unbelievable that someone could even WRITE that much in 40 minutes, much less actually formulate it with their brains, on the spot. Even if I was doing copy/paste via pencil, I still couldn’t jot all that down in 40 minutes.So I take the test, and it’s thoroughly mentally exhausting. I’m scrambling because I don’t know how much time I get beforehand. Just waiting for the “time’s up” announcement.For the first time ever, I have a chance to actually re-read the questions and make sure I’m doing the right thing. I have time to check my work. It’s crazy.But still, not easy. Still having to do extremely complex problems if you miss 1 step, it’s ruined. I was defeated. I had to muster mental energy to even blurt out nonsense for the last question.I turned it in and left. I went to the bathroom to recoup and just burst out laughing. Maniacal laughter. Just laughing like a madman. Like when you can’t tell if someone is laughing, screaming, or crying. That jagged breathing in between the waves.I felt like maybe I finally had a chance. “Maybe I actually passed that one” No, not gotten an A or B, but just PASSED it.Maybe he will show mercy if my grades show a trend of improvement. Maybe I can scrape a 53% which will somehow be curved into a 59.5% and rounded to a D.That was my only hope.I also felt awful. I got 2 hours for a 40 minute test. I relived the agony and hopelessness that I felt during prior tests, and how I’m sure my classmates felt during the test I just took.It was the most difficult and most technical test of the 3 so far.I laughed like a maniac again. All I could think of is how impossible it was. I laughed at the hopelessness of it.For some reason, this one analogy hit me in the moment and stuck with me:It’s like if someone gave you duct tape, WD-40, and a hammer, and said “build a space shuttle in 45 minutes, or we’re going to kill you”You wouldn’t even try. You would just laugh at the insanity of it, and throw your arms up, and say “shoot me”.You would walk up to them, right up to their outstretched arm, and carefully place your forehead directly on the barrel of the gun, wishing, hoping beyond hope they would pull the trigger and finally put you out of your misery.Next I thought of when animals in captivity or experiments exhibit self-harm. When you repeatedly give electric shocks to monkeys with no pattern. They can’t figure it out, and have no idea when it’s coming or how to trigger it or prevent it. So they start pulling their hair out, hitting their head against the walls, scratching their skin until they bleed. I guess, on some level, it’s a way for them to recover the mildest amount of control over their situation and their own suffering.That’s what I thought of.I managed to get a 78% on that exam. A huge relief, but too broken to care.This man broke me, and I stopped caring.If I study for 8 hours, I fail. If I study for 16 hours, I fail. But I understand the material and theory, just can’t be rushed to pump out formulas during tests.I have other, much more interesting classes to pay attention to. I’m overdue in taking care of myself. This is no way to live.I would walk by the halls and see students frantically studying for the final exam. I just laughed and felt sorry for them to still be chained, a slave to that class. I did the bare minimum on homework and studied for that exam in equal proportions as other classes.I took the final exam, which was a nightmare. Most professors give you a little bit of a break at the end. A little reward for making it to the end of a long and difficult semester. They usually make their final exams slightly less difficult than the unit tests. No need to beat a dead horse.Napy was the opposite. Instead of 5 impossible questions, there were 10 of them, with 2 “bonus” questions.With extra time, I ended up getting nearly 5 hours to work on it. Just ragged insanity. Time wasn’t the issue, it was just mental exhaustion. Not even being able to think straight. Too busy obsessing over the consequences to be able to think about the problem in front of me.Too busy hating this man for intentionally setting up his class this way and cracking jokes about it after he had been made abundantly aware of the effects of his mental abuse on his students.I don’t know what I got on the final exam. But he gave me a D- in the class. Yes, he went out of his way to give me a ‘minus’ in a school that doesn’t differentiate within the letter grade. As far as GPA is concerned, a D- is the same as a D is the same as a D+.Literally no reason for him to give me a D- rather than a plain D other than just disrespect.Ironically, immediately after graduation, I got hired at Siemens as a Systems Specialist for their HVAC branch. My job is literally all automatic controls! They are putting me through their own proprietary training curriculum to design and program their HVAC systems and I’m very excited to get out in the field.Unfortunately, he caused me to hate the material. Hate the subject. A rather interesting and extremely useful and relevant field of study in today’s advancing technology. Even though I put 3 or 4 times as much effort into his class as any other I’ve ever taken, I can barely seem to remember any of it compared to other classes. My best guess is I’ve repressed it. Either that, or his method is horrible for concept retention. Who knows, right?I’m not saying I would try to hurt him, or wish ill will upon him. All I’m saying is…Look, if I was on a jury for someone who assaulted him or attempted to murder him, I wouldn’t agree, but I’d understand.All I wish for him in life is that he have an invisible thumbtack in his shoe, right under his big toe, that he can never see or be able to remove it.I’m not mad about wanting to be a thorough professor, or just having high expectations. I actually appreciate him pushing us to explore the material better and having a legitimate mastery of it, rather than some other classes you could BS your way through, but mental games gotta stop.If you want to be open, and acknowledge it, that’s fine, but don’t wear a mask, jump out of a dark alley, beat the shit out of someone, then the next day tease them for having a black eye.Oh, and my advice for other students? Just take it over the summer. That’s the only session that he doesn’t teach. It’s SO much easier with a different professor. Just avoid him.Horrible that you have to go out of your way to take a summer class to avoid a single professor, but that’s life sometimes.EDIT: Like similar answers, talking about the corruption of college politics and such, I’m anticipating people calling me a loser or whatever. “You’re just mad he didn’t give you an A” or “lol probably playing too much video games” or whatever else.I’m not interested in convincing anybody one way or another. Obviously, my answer here is pretty much irrelevant if you won’t ever have this professor, but I’ll post some public grading records from WVU.Napolitano’s grades are consistently the lowest across MAE (mechanical and aerospace engineering).You can also see a very significant 1/2 letter grade difference between Napolitano’s grade and another professor, Andrew Rhodes.You can browse all of WVU’s grades here:WVU Fall 2018/Spring 2019 Average Grade and GPA Checker

Fantastic question! In college, I struggled through the semester and couldn't do the homework. When similar problems came up on a final exam, even in such a high-pressure situation, I could do it.How did I do it?A physics exam is a high-performance situationA physics test is like a performance in music or athletics. You require skills that gradually become stronger with repeated practice and adequate sleep and nutrition between practice sessions. You must be in top form the day of the test, so you will perform your best. I recommend studying a bit each day (we'll get to how in a bit) well in advance of the test so you get the skills in long term memory. Would you wait until the day before a marathon to begin training for it? Would you wait until the day before a piano recital to start practicing your music? Of course not. Yet all too often I see students behaving this way with studying physics. But physics is a skill in the same way as playing the piano or running a marathon.How to study physics - it's "practice," not "study"I will now describe exactly how I used to study for physics tests in college. The same idea will work in high school, and for other subjects that are performance-oriented rather than information-oriented. You may of course modify this method to suit your needs.The main insight here is that you are not learning information, but rather practicing a skill. It's like playing the piano. Looking at the book is not enough. You must have your hands on the keys to make progress.You will need:the homework assignments from the chapters that will be on the testthe professor's solutions to the homework (in case there is any doubt about the correctness of yours)your physics bookpencilcalculatorindex card (if you are allowed to have one on the test)stack of scratch paperGet all the homework assignments in a stack on the far left corner of your desk (assuming you are right-handed). Then put the book front and center and the scratch paper near you. What you will do is satisfy yourself that you can solve every problem in your homework stack with a minimum of peeking, and with a minimum of time spent.Glance at the first problem just to see the page number and problem, then go to town on that problem on your scratch paper. You are going for speed, in other words, you'll spend a minimum of time on each problem, by only practicing the parts you need in order to say to yourself, "I can do this."Here's my nine-step method for solving physics problems. On your scratch paper, you'll go through this, but in an abbreviated fashion.Make a very quick sketch, jot down the things you know, but maybe without numbers, e.g. maybe you know force, acceleration, speed, and you are looking for time so you jot down F, a, v and then t=? and make a sketch. Then you decide which physics equation to use (wow, Newton's 2nd law will get me part way there, then this kinematics equation...), jot them down. If at any point you are stuck for more than a few seconds, peek at the solution (either yours or the professor's) on the corner of your desk; as soon as you get the gist, put it down and do it from your own brain again. Once you get the equation you'll use, look at it and put little check marks above each thing you know, circle the thing you're trying to find, and if it looks like you are done, stop. No need to do algebra. Peek at the completed problem in the upper left corner of your desk. Did you get it set up right? If indeed you got this, toss that scratch paper in the recycle bin and move on to the next problem. Your neat and tidy solution remains on the corner of your desk, and the scratch paper is history. Done. You'll practice setting up and solving the difficult parts of every problem you ever did in the semester, in a number of hours, if you use this method, and you won't waste time on the tedious parts.You won't be writing down numbers, you won't be using a calculator much at all, and you won't be practicing algebra - unless you are shaky on how to solve the equation with algebra. In that case, by all means, do the algebra. It's up to you. When you are practicing for your piano recital, slow down and practice the parts that you struggle with, and then occasionally run through the whole piece to give it context. In physics, do the parts of the problems that are challenging to you and skip doing the things that are easy, because you don't need to practice them. You get to decide which parts you need to practice. My point is you don't have to do all the steps when you are practicing for a test.Formula card ("crib sheet")If you are allowed to take an index card into your test with formulas (a "crib sheet"), then I suggest having the blank card there while you study. Every time you use a formula to solve a problem on your scratch paper, pause and put it on the card as well. That way, your card slowly evolves to have exactly what you need on it, and nothing you don't need. (Of course, check your card later to make sure there's nothing important missing.) In general, the fewer things you have on the card, the better. If you have the whole chapter shrunk down postage-stamp size on the card, you are in real trouble. Remember, physics is a skill. It's like driving a car. Would you read the driver education manual while you are driving? No? Then neither should you read the physics book while taking a test. You gotta know the process by then. You are performing.So to answer your question "how do I know when I'm ready?" If you go through all the homework problems and say "I got this" to every one, you are ready.Addendum:Your brain is a part of your body. In some important ways, it is similar to a muscle. It requires:Adequate oxygenNutritionHydrationRestSo...Adequate oxygen: Try to breathe slowly and deeply during a test. You will be relaxed, and your anxiety will decrease. And you will simultaneously improve the performance of your brain. It's like a muscle in that way, and on a physics test you will be doing some heavy lifting with your brain.Nutrition: Your brain uses A LOT of calories. [I don't know the actual molecular biology of how much energy the brain uses. I'm basing my assertion on my subjective experience.] You can sit there and study physics and have similar nutritional needs as if you had been exercising. Take the opportunity to eat healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, complex carbohydrates, fiber, and good quality proteins such as meats and/or vegetarian substitutes. Avoid too much sugar and simple carbs when studying and when taking a test. Your blood glucose will temporarily spike, and then you will crash, and when that happens, your brain will not perform at its best. Instead, give it a dose of long-duration sustaining fuel with healthy food. Also, no changes in caffeine, i.e. on the day of a test, use caffeine as you usually do (or don't).Hydration: Drink enough water.Rest: This includes getting enough sleep after every night when you study. Which should be as many days as possible actually. Research shows that after you learn or practice something new, that night your brain uses your sleep time to reinforce and strengthen that learning.More on rest: Study a bunch for many days, not all on the last day (as I said before). Don't pull an all-nighter before the test. Your brain will be too tired to perform. Imagine taking a physics test with an alert, well-rested brain instead of a foggy, groggy brain.Also, right before the test, don't study. In fact, don't study much on the day of the test. That's like running 20 miles right before the marathon. On the day of the test, treat your brain like any other part of your body, and let it rest. Take up to a half hour the morning of your test looking over your notes, but no more. My favorite thing to do right before a test is to find a bench by myself and just sit there and space out. Then I walk in and my brain is refreshed and ready to go.If you try doing tests this way, even if it's a big deal like a final exam for a quantum mechanics test, you will likely blow it away.Good luck! Comments and feedback are welcome.--I offer physics tutoring online and in person: https://aaronjclegg.com/tutoring

I wished I could say it’s a great text but I’ve only read less than a few chapters, if that. I always wondered if some of the university textbooks copied his text without violating copyright laws. Because when stuck reading my college books, I would refer to it and they both almost sounded exactly the same, lolBut the reason I did was because it got me to slow down and learn the concept as a science, rather than my usual approach of quickly learning whatever I had to, in order to finish my homework assignment, lolBut seriously; to sit there and read that entire volume? I mean, how long would that take? months? I don’t know, but I’m proud of Billy. That’s probably why he’s a billionaire and we still have mortgage payments, lolIf Billy offered me $million, I’d probably find the patience to revisit the text. But during college days I had to read some of the sentences 3 times and still not get it. But I think Knuth knew that the reader wouldn’t get 100% of the concepts, but even 40% would set the reader in the right direction. In my case, my inability to speed read it got me so upset that I would spend whatever time required to prove that I could do it…..and next thing I knew, I came up with the solution…..so that worked…………not pleasantly, but when is finding a solution to a tough problem ever pleasant? lol