Physics study plan for gamsat.

Gary. J

I am coming from a non-science background (International Development) and am attempting to teach myself the basic sciences. Khanacademy and other online resources have been very helpful. So far I have gotten to grips with chemistry, but now I want to shift my focus to physics. However I don't have the time to go at everything. Can anyone tell me which areas of physics I should pay most attention to?

Also, are there are people in Cork City who would like to meet up to discuss Gamsat prep. Banging heads together could be a good way of getting ideas and boosting motivation.

letsdothis

Can be a bit tough with physics picking topics because lot of them tend to build on each other. To begin with you need basics like vectors and scalars, displacement, velocity, acceleration, etc. Some of the most important areas are Mechanics, Force, Work, Energy (Kinetic, Potential, etc), Torque, Waves, Radioactive Decay (crosses over with physical chem), Lenses, Electric Fields, Current Electricity and Circuits.

If you are struggling where to start on any subject, go through the postmortem threads on pagingdr for the last few years, where you will get a good idea of the types of questions asked. Physics, more than the other science area is really about practicing questions and applying principles. A lot of the time the questions won't be obvious physics questions and your first task will be to ask yourself what area of physics it is covering!

nomoreexams

I personally skipped all the physics questions in the exam (i.e. guessed the answer without even reading the questions). Physics wasn't my strong point and I knew I would spend too long trying to figure out the answer and even then would have a good chance of getting it wrong. instead I had more time to do questions that I had a good chance of getting right (the biology questions don't require much study in advance but are more time consuming in the exam due to graphs etc) when I had the extra time to spend on them. That being said there were very few physics questions last year so that may be why it worked to my advantage.

If you really want to give it a lash, I would advise the physics for dummies book and khan academy. It's very basic physics that's asked (or so people who are good at physics tell me, it might as well have been quantum mechanics to me)