Reflections of the First Quarter of Physics

Physics has been completely different from my expectations of it. I thought that physics would be a really easy course that was conceptual, and not mathematic in nature. I built up these expectations through conversations with former physics students and my own notions about what physics was. To be honest, this was kind of disappointing to me. I have never been a science person, however, I really enjoyed Science 7 and Science 8. I dislike most science classes because they tend to examine physical phenomena in such a mathematical, technical manner that the phenomena themselves become so detached from what we are learning. However, in Science 7 and Science 8, we learned about how things worked, not the formulae that served as mathematical proofs as to why things worked the way that they did. I thought that physics would be focused on learning about the conceptual nature of the laws of physics and how they manifest themselves in the world. Instead, physics seems like basically a harder version of any math course that I have taken at Iolani. Instead of learning why elevators fall in the way that they do, it seems like we just use that example in order to apply mathematical formulae. I don't really understand why we learning that kind of thing. The way I see it, we take math courses every semester at Iolani, so why should physics just be another math course? Except for the lab about getting the ball in the cup, it seems like most of the labs are basically extended math problems in which we must collect the data for the problem, as opposed to just being given it. I wish labs were more like they were in Science 7, Science 8, and even Biology, in which their purpose was to give us hands-on ways of learning and examining the things that we are learning. However, physics has definitely had some very good elements. Unlike most classes, physics can be laid-back and fun. I really like the atmosphere of the classroom, and coming to physics is one of the better parts of my school day. In terms of grades, I am not doing as well as I want to be doing. I am having a hard time incorporating trigonometry (which I haven't taken yet) into the course. I also tend to work sloppily and take more short cuts than is permissible, which seems to be particularly damaging in physics. I think the class might be easier if more time was spent devoted to being taught how to do the problems multiple times.