PHYS 2010

I put off physics to the end of my collegiate career thinking it would be no big deal. Phys 2010 with Hirosky was a cold, hard slap in the face from reality. If you want to survive this class, get used to teaching yourself the material from the book. His lectures are almost entirely worthless, other than you need to show up to do the graded clicker questions. If you read the book thoroughly, do every practice problem you can get your hands on, and do the homework over and over until you REALLY understand it, you'll be okay in the class. I also recommend finding a tutor you jive with because the TAs are 100% useless. Lastly, although Hirosky calls it a "slight adjustment", there is a curve at the end of the course.

This course was living hell. For a person who struggled through physics in high school, this class was at times truly impossible. Professor Hirosky is a nice guy, yet all of his slides are exactly copied from the textbook without any of the helpful context. The clicker questions that were asked were sometimes helpful when it came to tests. The tests and the final exam in this class were probably the hardest exams I ever took, especially since Hirosky wrote them. Class averages for tests were ~60. All I can say is find a good group of people to work with, start all the MasteringPhysics assignments as early as possible with as much reinforcement as possible, and be prepared to sleep with your textbook.

This review is long, but I want to make sure students know what to expect in physics.

Professor Hirosky is a nice person. However, his lecture style leaves much to be desired. I do not want to blame Professor Hirosky for my negative experience in the class, but he did not take the time in class to explain fundamental concepts and seemed to have more fun confusing the students. Whenever he would go through example problems, he would show his computations (usually a algebraic shortcut) with little to no explanation about how solving the problem related to a concept. Even if he did mention how a problem related to a concept, it would be brief. The demonstrations were entertaining but not helpful.

His slides, while helpful for studying, were not always covered in their entirety during lecture, even though he would rush through them. I would occasionally visit the earlier section, and he managed to get through all of the slides in his lecture, showing his lack of consistency in pacing his lecture slide presentations. As said in previous reviews, Hirosky likes to use trick questions in clicker questions and has a condescending attitude about the difficultly level in problems. In other words, he is unimpressed if a question is too easy to answer.

Like in most classes, the exams are also weighted heavily toward your final grade (85% total): Final (45%), Midterms (3 total, 40%), Homework (11%), Clicker (3%), and Prelecture (1%). I know this is a University convention to weight the final at a high percentage, but to put so much pressure on students who spend more time on homework than preparing for the final is not fair. While working on homework problems should count as preparation for the final, the homework questions on MasteringPhysics were not always representative of exam questions. The exams also ranged in difficulty, since they were not always written by Professor Hirosky and sometimes written by Professor Hung or another professor in the physics department. How are students expected to familiarize themselves with an professor's exam style, if he or she is not always the one writing it?

I went to office hours for help, but the TA would just tell me how to solve the problem mathematically without explaining the why. Overall, I think the physics department and curriculum for 2010 is poorly structured, since I did not learn anything except my intuition in physics is usually wrong. They say this class is more than a "plug and chug" subject, but I think I wasted my first semester working through the homework only to come up with different combinations of plugging in numbers.

I recommend skimming chapters before and after lecture, working through additional questions in the textbook, reworking through questions in MasteringPhysics, and visiting office hours of different TA's to find the TA that is the best at explaining concepts. There are also supplementary websites like HyperPhysics and Khan Academy.

Just be prepared to put in a lot of work towards preparing for the exams. The final was something else.... Hirosky likes to ask tricky questions and goes at lightning pace through lectures. He put together two out of the three midterm tests this semester so if he ends up teaching next semester, take him so you can get used to the way he thinks.

If I had 1 hour and 15 minutes to live, I would take this class because it feels like eternity. I would also welcome death by the end of it but Hell wouldnt be so bad since I had the devil as a professor.

Hirosky seems like he would be a nice guy outside of teaching physics, but his class is not good. I love the demonstrations, but everything else is bad. He clicks through slides at the front of the classroom which is so boring. The class is an hour and 15 minutes long and I am constantly checking the clock for when it will be over. I know many of you are taking it because of premed so i suggest getting a tutor and finding friends in the class. The homework takes forever and it is best to have people to help you with it. To study for the tests just do as many practice problems as you can and hope that Hirosky hasn't written it. His tests are exponentially harder than when PQ writes them.