This course is not incredibly difficult if you did well in high school physics. The labs are straightforward (especially if you luck out and get a good TA.) While the exam questions are of a higher difficulty, they are still very doable if you read the question thoroughly, and think carefully about your approach to solving the problem. Overall, I'm really glad I took this as my elective!

The course covers almost everything from physics 20, the momentum unit from physics 30, plus a bit of extra content - non-uniform circular motion, angular velocity, torque, etc. Although math 31 is a pre-req, while derivatives and integration were definitely helpful in understanding the content, we were never explicitly tested on any calculus, so all you really need to be able to do is apply unit analysis to graphs.

There was definitely a learning curve at the beginning of the semester to having Dr. Langill as a prof. His lectures can be all over the place sometimes, and his notes definitely follow that pattern of being unorganized. His style of teaching is very different from physics teachers I had from high school as he would never actually walk the class through an example. It was always either that he would simply talk about the problem and not do calculations, or he would give the class a problem and then quiz everyone using tophat. That being said, by the end of the semester I found myself really enjoying this class and Dr. Langill's lectures. He is a very nice guy that tried really hard to make online learning engaging and fun. As painful and excessive his use of tophat can feel, it was actuall...read more

Brush up on your high school physics and you will be fine! (Also, don't overthink/second guess yourself on questions because I found that sometimes the answers were the ones that initially seemed too good to be true!)