An interactive and fun course to learn about introductory physics. PHYS 101 is all about how energy and waves work!
format of the course
The lecture portion of this course is quite interactive as it consists of many i-clicker questions, group worksheets, and cool demos. There is also a lab portion of the course where you get to work with a partner apply the things you’ve learnt in class. Besides the interesting lab experiments, there are also no lab reports; however there is a time-crunching lab exam. The labs were held once every two weeks along with alternating tutorials that were also held biweekly. In the tutorials we would work in small groups of 3-4 to solve a series of challenging problems and then “teach” how we solved it to the TAs.
There is only one midterm worth 10-15% of your grade. Both the midterm and final exam are written as two-stage exams where you first write the exam individually and then write it in a group of your own choosing. The group phase was basically the exact same exam completed as a group. The great part is that if you do worse on the group phase it would not count towards your score.
gpa 🙂 or 🙁
It’s feasible to get a good grade in the course if you enjoy the course content and enjoy math overall (no Calculus needed). Some parts where marks are easily lost are in the labs as they are quite nitpicky with the marking and formatting of the notebooks and assignments. However, there are a lot of areas where marks are basically free (participation, tutorials) to make up for this fact. The exams are super fair in terms of content, however the MC portion can be stressful as getting one wrong could cost you 6% of your mark. The average when I took this course was 72. Attached is the grade distribution form 2017W term 2:
PHYS 101 Grade Distribution. Credits: ubcgrades.com
verdict: to take or not to take?
I would definitely take this course again! Being a student in life sciences doesn’t give me many opportunities to take physics-related courses. If you are in the same boat as me, this is a stress-free course to widen your scientific breadth!