22/05/2020
MDCAT PHYSICS (A General Guideline of self study):
Stuff in Physics can be divided in two portions.
i- Part that need to be memorized
ii- Part which requires concept
Part i-
Usually 50% of mcqs in physics are simple. And even 50-75% of these mcqs could be attempted well if you just had a single read of the book.
From the book you will have to highlight the important lines. You are not to memorize " took a box of 5kg and a force of 10 N was applied on it" Just waste of time. I have shown my book in which I underlined the important lines with green pointer and the lines which are even more important and also require revision are underlined by red pointer. You need to analyze whether a line could be an mcq or not. Whether it is to he remembered or not. That's your knowledge of entry test. Experienced person (The person who had solved past papers and some tests of academy) would know that what is to be remembered and what is to be ignored.
Follow these steps;
a) Read the book without highlighting anything.
b) Solve a test of every unit.
c) Read the book again and you will have an idea of how MCQs of physics are constructed.
d) Underline what seems important to you this time. I hope you will not skip important things neither you will remember useless things.
Part ii-
Part ii is about concepts. So, how can you make good concepts?
Let's suppose we have a topic "Projectile" and you are not much clear about this topic.
Follow these steps to grasp a topic.
a) First, read the topic carefully and slowly. Try to understand each and every line. But you are still 50% clear about the topic. You couldn't get it.
b) Watch a YouTube video or a lecture. Khan academy'e lectures are worth listening though. Watch a video. Your concept gets a little better but still not good enough. Watch your local lectures (of step and kips, easily available on YouTube) Whatever you find helpful from the lectures, write it on the book where the topic is written.
c) So, your concepts will be 60-70% would be done. But you need 100%.
d) Solve an exercise , a single exercise from a practice book with good explanation of each MCQ(Scholors conceptual Physics, STEP Practice Book, KIPS Practice book) Check how many MCQs are out of your knowledge and concept. Read the explanation of MCQs and try to understand them.
e) Read the topic again. You will get most of the concepts written in the topic this time.
f) Solve another exercise from another book. And find your mistakes, read the explanations and try to understand them.
(Cycle will continue untill you are master at the topic. Most of you will grap the topic after 2 or 3 exercises)
Numericals :
Do the Numericals and Examples given in the text book. There are variety of practice books with a number of good numbericals. Solve them. Don't hesitate to revise the rules of mathematics. Practice calculations. Solve simple maths questions when you are free. I even had to take a little help from the books of my younger brother to learn basic maths, cause I am big loser at maths. Memorize tables if required.
Taking Notes:
Some people are addicted to making and studying from their own notes.
But I preferred to read the notes already available and I would extract useless points from the notes and write them on the book as shown.
Notes by Assad Bajwa are great anf worth reading but Komal Aapi's notes are also good. Read the notes or any other stuff and if you find anything useful , write it on the book. I even wrote some mcqs on book because I found them very important. I used to extract points from practice books, notes of academics and notes of students and write them on my book. You can also make flow charts of some topics which are very confusing and mumbo jumbo on book, in order to memorize and grasp them as I have shown.
Highlighting:
Highlight the most important things with red and less important with green. I would make a big mark with red pointer on the line or on the concept which I think was worth revising and remembering. So, whenever I got some free time, I would simply go through pages and wherever I see the red mark , it was a warning for me to stop and read the concept because I might have forgotten it.
"To be or not to be, that's the question"
-William Shakespeare
