Course Chronicles: Phys 157 (w/ Andrzej Kotlicki)

So the long awaited Course Chronicles have recommenced. (Insert apologetic spiel about absence … after this post I’ll post an update on life!)

Phys 157.. previously known as the full year course Phys 153.
UBC describes the course as follows: “Heat, thermodynamics, oscillations, waves, and sound.”
(I know, pretty descriptive isn’t it…)

Phys 157 is the “part 1” intro to physics course for first year engineering, so it’s a first term course.

My section’s class average was 67% (which is about standard for most first year engineering courses).

General thoughts on the course:

Pretty damn hard. BUT once you figured it out, it was actually pretty enjoyable. Some people definitely figured it all out before others though. Some people never really figured it out but still passed. Don’t stress too much (easier said than done..) and keep plugging away.

Thoughts on Kotlicki:

Kotlicki is this great, old, Polish prof, with a strong but understandable accent.
At first he’s quite intimidating (and let’s be honest, most profs are, especially the ones who’ve obviously been teaching for a long time), so it’s definitely easy to dislike him right off the bat.
I never really had a real chance to get to know him well (it’s tough when you’re in a massive lecture style course and you asked all of your questions in tutorial), but he’s got a funny sense of humour – he always threatened to use ‘military measures’ to make the class shut up.. I guess you could say we were a chatty group.
I found most lecturers to not be particularly helpful when it comes to actually learning. They’re more like supporting your self learning. I feel like that’s just the way it is at UBC (that’s the style..). They expect you to know the material decently beforehand. If you don’t, you’ll be pretty lost in lectures.

Course Structure + Tips for Success!: 

-Weekly prereadings. Do them. Some people picked up on stuff really quickly, but I’ve come to realize that I am not one of those people (in high school I was.. but times have changed haha). Make notes, don’t just read them blindly. Focus on what they tell you to focus on. I’m gonna be honest here and tell you that sometimes you had no damn clue what was going on in the prereadings. Read them again later. Read them three times. Keep at it, and maybe something will make some sense. If you understand a fraction some weeks, you’re golden.

– Prereading quizzes every week. We were expected to read 3+ sections in the textbook and then do an online “quiz” (which total, ended up being worth ~5% of our grade), usually multiple choice. Work in groups for this, and get your ‘free’ marks! (Don’t regret not doing them..)
You’re probably also going to get a lot of ‘help’ from Facebook groups for the course as well – take advantage of it!

– Clickers every class. These were basically used for attendance marks. I think they took your top 80% of the clickers (if that makes sense?) to compensate for any miscellaneous missed classes due to illness (or skipping..).
The clicker questions were multiple choice questions, displayed on the powerpoints.

– Lecture activities. Every lecture, there were 1-2 worksheets handed out in class, to be worked on in groups of 3 or 4. Sometimes nobody in your group knew what the hell was going on, and sometimes you all did. Most of the time, you knew one classmate/friend who hopefully knew sort of what was going on. Some weeks you’d think you knew how to do it, and then realize that you were so far away from the actual answer. That’s learning for you I guess. After however much time you spend on the activity (it’s basically at the prof’s discretion), he’ll do some clickers on it, and then usually discuss the answer (sometimes in depth, sometimes not so much). As you work on the activities, you can totally ask the prof/TAs for guidance though.
It’s worth studying the activities, because they are very similar to exam questions!!

– Weekly tutorials. We had clicker questions in these too, so take advantage of getting those participation marks! The tutorials were problem solving tutorials, so we’d go through a few questions as a class (~40-50 students in each tutorial section), and we’d also have some individual time to work on them as well. Unfortunately, these were only an hour long, once a week, so really take them seriously, because they can be really helpful!!

– Assignments. The assignments were alternating every week. So they’d alternate between a hand in written assignment (usually three exam format questions), and a Mastering Physics assignment.
The written assignments were to be handed in in your tutorial (though I did hear of people getting their friends to hand theirs in in other people’s tutorials too and that worked out fine.. it’s always worth checking with your tutorial instructor though). Some weeks they were crazy difficult (this course is not easy, I hate to say it). A lot of them were similar to textbook problems though, so it’s worth getting your hands on a solution manual 😛
Work together on them! And do research on similar questions. I found that I did most of my learning by doing these problems/having people explain to me how to do these problems.
Mastering Physics.. Like most online assignment website thingies, these were probably the bane of most students (engineering, science, you name it) existence. The questions varied, from drawing graphs, free body diagrams, formula derivations, and if you’re lucky, an actual question with numbers that you could plug and chug. Unfortunately, the program itself was quite finnicky, but at least you could find a lot of the answers online. The questions weren’t usually crazy difficult though, but being able to do them well really wouldn’t be enough preparation for exams.

– Exams. Two midterms and a final. You must get at least 45% on the final to pass the course! The first midterm was pretty brutal (but you’ll find that most uni midterms are…), but the second one was much better. The final (to me) was fair, and there were a few questions that were kind of give away questions, in the sense that there were no tricks, and even if you were pretty lost in the course, you should’ve been able to get a passing mark on them.

…

I’m writing this post a fair time after I’ve taken the course (well like 7 months or so..), so I might be forgetting some things 😮 If you have any more questions, leave a comment and I’ll be sure to answer 🙂

Hope y’all are having a spectacular summer! I hope to get the rest of these course chronicles up before the beginning of school!