Final study suggestions

Definitions

Make sure you know what the following terms mean, how they are related to each other and how they are different.  It would be good to make sure you know what units go with each quantity.

• Position, distance, displacement, average velocity, instantaneous velocity, speed, and acceleration.
• Force, weight, friction, normal force, tension, coefficient of friction.
• Work, kinetic (rotational and translational) energy, potential (gravitational and spring) energy.
• Momentum and impulse, elastic and inelastic collisions.
• Angular position and velocity, tangental, radial and angular acceleration.
• Torque and moment of inertia.

Conceptual questions

Look through the Questions sections at the end of chapters 1-9 and in-class Questions to Ponder.  Conceptual questions on the test will be similar.

Diagrams

Make sure you remember how to draw and interperate position, velocity and acceleration graphs, Force diagrams, Momentum and Energy diagrams, and Torque diagrams.  Remember and perhaps practice writing down the key equations from each diagram (motion equations from graphs, sum of forces for Force, conservation of energy and momentum from those, and sum of torques from Torque).

Exercises

• Remember the key physics ideas and how to distinguish what idea or ideas need to be used in a particular problem.
• Go over the equations given on the practice test, and make sure you know which equations go with each physics idea, to help you make sure you use the correct ones.
• Remember and practice the 5-step problem solving method and how to set up and solve problems.  Taking the time to carefully set up and solve problems will benifit you on the exam because (a) you will be less likely to make careless mistakes and (b) I give partial credit on different steps of the solution. 
• Look over past homework assignments.  In particular, it may be helpful to not solve many of them completely, but make sure you remember how to go about solving them.  If you kept good note about homework solutions during the semester, this will help you now.