I have clearly been stalling on writing this description of my rationale for homework in the context of physics. I have an abundance of opinions about this topic myself and the interwebs have even more. There are some studies that seem to suggest that doing homework has little discernable correlation with grade success in physics. Of course there is also some evidence that grades themselves are correlated with less overall learning. What a mess......

Until such time as our understanding of the role of homework becomes more clear here is how I am going to approach this matter. As Malcom Gladwell has suggested it seems to take serious, effortful practice to get good at anything. The practice needs to involve sustained effort, confusion and challenges, and real world meaningful (sometimes called authentic) problems. Homework can be a tool to help accomplish this. Homework is not so effective when it is "drill and kill" or mindless repetition and pattern matching. To be most helpful problems need to have appropriate ambiguity in them. They must force us to consider and then reconsider our understanding of core concepts. In that process we will need to construct our own way to make sense of the concepts and processes.

Because this class operates in parallel with another PH211 class that uses Mastering Physics I will be posting very comparable HW questions here to keep your experiences aligned as much as possible with your colleagues in the other sections. While our grading process may be different you will be having the same experiences and can share your insights and thoughts across the class boundaries.

Homework Problems

Homework Solutions

  • Math
  • Kinematics 1D
  • Newton 1D
  • Kinematics 2D

Homework Resources