Foo - High school physics

I am signed up for taking physics for my last year of highschool. I am actually looking forward to it, I've heard some decent things about the course.
People who have taken it, did you enjoy it? Was it worth it? How was it overall?

Im currently taking physics, but i dont imagine i can give you much advice

see the teacher is only a 3rd year teacher and this is his first year teaching physics, fresh out of college hes not very good at it. Mostly we just do cool experiments talk about world science events that get totaly of track from physics but are still really cool, and plan awsome projects and trips

in 2 weeks we are driving as a class to seattle to see the OMSI, space needle, mt st helens..ect.

what we have learned about physics is pretty hard stuff, I have learned about a million eqations but i dont really remember what does what. Iv learned the most from discussing concepts

you're in freakin' high school?!?

Well, it's pretty important for what you're interested in. So I think you definitely should take it. I loved my physics class. A PhD professor from a local community college taught our high school honors physics class, and we had labs at the nearby college once a week. Learned so much that it really made college physics a lot easier even though I was taking the toughest level (of four levels) of intro physics. I'm not a physicist now, but I really enjoyed taking college physics as a result. Got to learn all sorts of cool things that the lower level courses would never cover.

Oh, and our boat race was great fun. We built boats out of newspaper, getting a limited allocation of shellac and masking tape to waterproof and hold the boat together. It was an annual event at our school. My team won by a huge margin. :D It helped that we had prom dates within the team, so we could work while planning for prom. And my prom date's dad is a physics professor at Harvey Mudd College and an amateur kayaker. :) Our boat weighed over 100 pounds. Not the fastest to accelerate, but boy was it fast once it got going.

A few years later, the LA Times showed up for the boat race, and my twin sisters' team won. My sisters were asked how they planned their winning strategy, and they said they just followed my footsteps. :)

you're in freakin' high school?!?
:)

different strokes for different folks

i was taking ap chem my senior year and then decided to be lazy so i dropped it and when into physics and later dropped that cuz i couldn't stand it

it didn't turn out to be a big deal. and my senior year without a science or math class was quite delightful since i did barely any work.

but i'm a bum and you probably aren't hahaha.

Thanks for the reply JSchen.
I will certainly be taking it, I know its important for what I want to do.

Plus, I see some of the projects htat folks who are taking it have to build, that looks like fun. If anything, I can use my CNC router (will be finished this month i hope) to crank out parts.
You do have to be taking precalc or trig though, I am signed up for precal, just not sure of how it will go

I took Physics 1 in 11th grade. The teacher despised me, 'cause I used to skip every Wednesday, which was his test day. He thought I was getting the test spec's from other students, then taking a make-up test on Thursdays, so he would make up special, individual tests just for me (what a loser, eh?)

Anyway, for my senior year, I signed up for Physics 2, which you needed his permission to do, and which he gave. Then he switched me into French class, without my knowledge. Complete tool.

You can do it, phantomcow2. And if you start not understanding anything, post away! My trig/(pre-)calc is still pretty sharp at least conceptually, and computationally, I can look up stuff (or use a calculator) fast enough. And physics, well, calc was invented for physics. Knowing calc really well means physics is a breeze.

physics 1 and 2? We only have one physics course, but divided in levels. like college prep, tech prep, etc.
You take it in senior year only, and it is 2 periods. Lab every other day

Yep, 2 physics courses. I didn't mind not being able to take the second one. My primary interest was in literature. Oh, and girls.

My hs physics teacher was Jerry Lewis from the Nutty Professor. No joke, this guy looked just like him and wore the same clothes everyday. And he sucked at teaching. Luckily I had a much better professor in college so it wasn't that difficult when I took it there. And of course we got to play with frickin' lasers.

I didn't take physics in high school. I would have learned more in college physics if I had already seen the material in high school.

I like math more than physics.

Honors physics in the 11th grade was a walk in the park. 100 level physics at johns hopkins raped me.

Go for it, you'll have a lot of fun. Physics and lab will help you with concrete real-world examples of the concepts involved. This will help you clear that hurdle with math. You may actually even enjoy math once you see it modeling real-world phenomena! :)

I had chemistry in 11th grade (current) and plan on Physics for senior year. I heard its a great class. I have the teacher as a math teacher and I absolutely enjoy the class. Math is my favorite class hehe. Well, hope you take it! Its great prep for college classes.

I'm taking physics in college right now, and it is awesome. The only thing cooler than physics is infinity. I didn't take physics in high school, and regret it big time. High school is the easiest time in life to learn the widest variety of stuff, and I blew it riding bikes most of the time..lol. Now all I have time for are the classes that pertain to my major, but I have a really wide range of interests, so I am frustrated all the time by how much I have to focus on only my major. So I guess what I am saying is, it will be worth while.

Thankyou all for the replies, you have helped my schedule for next year quite a bit! I've already signed up for physics, and DannoXYZ, that is a good point about the math.
I really hope the math in physics goes as well as the math in Chemistry, which I am taking now.

Physics was one of my favorite classes in high school. It's not the easiest, and I had a good teacher, but it was definitely interesting. I regret to say, it will be much harder when you take it in college, but I think you'll still find it interesting.

there are physics courses without cal and those with it.... you will need trig though... and it's easy.

Hmmm... I know nothing about physics... :p (ya right, I have a BS in Biophysics),

Actually high school physics is great for getting your feet in the water and starting to understand some of the basic concepts that physics requires, expecially for you engineering types (you will love statics and dynamics).I actually will be teaching high school physics in a few years, and unlike some teachers I already have a year coteaching college level physics...

BTW a good teacher will know how much equations vs how much conceptual physics you will need and laylor the class for that...

Good Luck!

Mandy

Well we have two teachers for physics, one who teachers CP, one who teaches AP.
Apparently the one who teaches AP is awful. I guess on tests he sometimes forgets to add in details so he will hgave a question like
"A man throws a ball, how far did it go?"

Hmm

Well we have two teachers for physics, one who teachers CP, one who teaches AP.
Apparently the one who teaches AP is awful. I guess on tests he sometimes forgets to add in details so he will hgave a question like
"A man throws a ball, how far did it go?"Hmm

That isn't physics, its philosophy. Which is a much more entertaining class, by the way.

I'm in physics right now.

W=P/T

That's all I got.

Assuming that it's just mechanics (free fall, momentum, ect.), it shouldn't be bad at all. You don't need the calculus for HS (and low level college) physics, but once you learn calculus, it's cool to see how it can relate a lot of physics formulas together.

I loved physics - until they started mumbling about quarks and dark matter. I really would've preferred if they'd stuck to the facts. :p

Since we're still yakking about physics, my favorite lecture in physics was about the Intermediate Axis Theorem (http://www.physicscentral.com/lou/lou-01-32.html), aka the Tennis Racquet Theorem. :) Why take high school physics? So that you can take the really tough honors physics in college (the one my freshman roommate, who went on to physics grad school, dropped out of because the first day was way too confusing) and learn some really cool stuff.