I did not take grade 12 Physics and I'm worried about taking first year physics (1P91 and 1P92) without it. It says that there is no prior background in Physics needed but do you think that realistically that I would be able to do well?

Indeed, no Physics background is required for our first-year physics courses, so it's entirely possible to be successful in the two Y1 Physics courses without having taken Grade 12 Physics. However, what is required is very strong Grade 11 mathematics skills, and hard work done on a daily basis.

Without knowing anything about you, it's not possible to predict how well you'll do in Y1 Physics, because it depends on the two factors listed above. There are positive steps you can take. First, your course page may have pointers to Math Review tutorials that your instructor has made available. These tutorials should give you a sense for the mathematics skills that are absolutely essential for success in Y1 physics. If you stumble at all at any point in these math review documents (hesitate, get answers wrong, etc.), this is a good sign that further work is needed on your part.

Another excellent place to get further instruction and practice is found here. Scroll down to the mathematics portion of the site, and click on the first batch of tutorial links on the right side of the page (Brackets, Fractions, etc.), and then click on the links on the left side of the page and work through them. Your goal should be to master all the items in Math 1 (excluding 1.7 Series Expansions and Approximations, Power Series Representations, and Fourier Series, which you'll learn later in university math courses), and all the items in Math 2 (except for 2.3 Conic Sections and 2.8 Matrices and Determinants). If you master all of this background mathematics, you can feel confident that you'll do well in your first-year science courses, provided that you work hard on a daily basis.

Daily work is a foreign concept to many incoming students. I can't guess about your work ethic; maybe it's great, in which case you only need to continue doing what you've always been doing. However, some students are used to drifting along in high school, not really studying regularly, cramming for tests, and getting by in this way. This approach is absolutely inadequate at university and leads to failure regularly. In the same way that athletes and musicians practice every single day, students need to work on each of their subjects every single day.

University courses are much more fast-paced than high-school courses, and there is very little contact time with course instructors, because first-year classes are typically so large. Therefore, there is little daily, personal guidance from course instructors, and students are expected to be responsible for their own daily activities. You need to grapple with every single one of your courses, every single day, and wrestle each one of them to the ground, every single day. Cramming doesn't work, because there is so much more material in a university course. Cramming places your learning in your short-term memory, so it's OK for tomorrow's test, but nothing goes into your long-term memory, so students who rely on cramming tend to do OK on tests and then crash on final exams, because there is too much material and not enough time in an exam period to learn five courses by cramming.

On the other hand, daily hard work of the right kind does indeed place your learning into your long-term memory, where you have access to it for a lifetime, thereby preparing you well for final exams and also providing a strong foundation upon which you can successfully build in second year and beyond.

If you feel that your work ethic is lacking, start now by practicing a new habit of daily work. Pick any activity of your choice (a mathematics review would be a good choice, as it will kill two birds with one stone), and practice it daily, before you ever come to a Physics lecture. Schedule time every single day to work on the activity of your choice, and make sure you stick with it. Chart your progress, and get appropriate help when you need it. It takes about a month to form a new habit, and if you start in the summer you will have plenty of time before September to form this new habit, which will serve you extremely well in your university life and in your career beyond university.

My instructor does not permit the use of laptops and smartphones in class. This is really inconvenient! It is also backward, because this also means no classroom response systems like in some of my other classes. I am really good at multitasking and even if I check my messages and emails occasionally during the class, this does not bother anyone else. I really must stay in touch with my friends and family.

Taking lecture notes longhand ensures important cognitive encoding takes place. This is particularly important in a conceptual course like Physics. See here for more details.

In short, most of the implied assumptions in the questions are wrong: your comprehension of the material is reduced, multitasking reduces your cognitive effectiveness in all of the multiple tasks, and others are negatively affected by your screens, dings, and pop-ups.

The following are the only exceptions to the policy of no electronic devices:

• a registered learning disability that requires the use of a laptop (requires a note from the Student Accessibility Services, delivered to the instructor in person);
• an electronic paper device, laid flat on the desk and used to make hand-written notes electronically, must be in airline mode;
• volunteer firefighters or medical professionals on-call are allowed network-active devices on silent (requires a letter from the employer, delivered to the instructor in-person).

I recently registered in the PHYS 1P21. I was wondering if it could be added to my Sakai, so that I can have the course outline.

Some PHYS courses do not use Sakai. Instead, go to https://www.physics.brocku.ca/Courses/ and follow the links to your course. Additional information should be available there.

I cannot find any listings of the readings for this course, am I right to assume that we would read all of Chapter XX for this week?

There is no formal list of readings; base your reading on what is covered in class. The best guide is the Homework list for the current week; the problems that are assigned tell you which parts of the Chapter(s) XX and YY need to be covered.

In the lecture I scribbled down a note about homework having to be handed in by 10am on Monday, I did however neglect to jot down where and how. If it's not too much trouble would you please point me in the right direction?

There is no homework to hand in. If the assigned homework uses an online system such as WeBWorK, it is completed and graded online. If the homework is in the form of a list of problems from a textbook (paper or online), it is to be completed on your own, as a practice. There will be a weekly quiz during one of the lectures, on the material covered by the assigned homework. Sometimes the quiz will include the very same problems that were assigned as homework, but more likely, it will contain questions and problems similar to those asigned as homework.

The list of homework problems may grow and change as the week progresses, but after the last lecture of the week, the homework list displaying the assigned problems is "frozen" for the week; the red pointer hand moves down, and all homework assigned after that is to be covered on the following week's quiz.

However, there are very specific and strictly enforced deadlines for various parts of the course (pre-lab questions, lab reports, etc.) Please note that individual deadline extensions cannot be made; it would be unfair to other students, so please do not ask. Only valid - and documented - medical reasons will be accepted, with a make-up mechanism appropriate to each case.

Many of the formulas we need for our homework, and may need on the quizzes are not on the formula sheet that was handed out in the tutorial. May we write them on the sheet? Most likely we will need those formulas for the quizzes, and it's very important for me since those quizzes are worth 50% of my mark.

No, you are not allowed to write anything on the formula sheets. Doing so would constitute cheating!

The formulas on the formula sheet have been carefully selected. They are a reflection of what your instructor considers fundamental. All other expressions you may require for a particular problem are either provided within the problem itself, or must be derived starting from the fundamental formulas on the formula sheet.

Exceptions are the algebraic/trig identities/surface areas & volumes of solid bodies, etc. that are considered common knowledge and may be quoted from memory.

I took out from the library [downloaded from the web] a copy of last year's PHYS 1P91 exam, but there were no answers to go with it. Could you please email me the answers or refer me to where I can get them.

As a rule, the final exam answers are not available online, but you are welcome to come to my office or to the Help Desk with your solutions; we'll be happy to look over them and tell you if you are right or wrong, or to provide you with help in solving them.

Note: if your instructor has a different policy about posting solutions, it will be announced in class.

• if tutorials began this week at all?
• is there a quiz this week?
• is there a lab on Tuesday?
• ...

Questions about physics are always welcome and will always be answered as quickly as possible.

However, before asking questions of administrative nature please first consult the course website. A lot of effort goes into keeping it up to date, and the answer to your question may already be there.

I have been working through the homework problems. I've been noticing that a good number are "even numbered" problems, and as such the answer is not shown in the back of the book. It's not so helpful to be doing homework when you have no way of checking to see if you are indeed doing it correctly. Could I request that you try to stick with problems where the answer is shown, so that we can check the work as we go?

I am afraid I will continue to assign "even-numbered" problems, the ones without a solution at the back of the book.

Life does not always have answers "at the back of the book". You must learn to have enough confidence in your skills to solve problems even for those problems where the answer is not known in advance. The odd-numbered problems will allow your to make sure, and the even-numbered ones will allow you to test yourself. Both are integral to the learning process.