Physics is Hard

If someone tells me that physics is easy, they are either lying or they are a genius.

Throughout most people’s education they have the one class whose difficulty is just on another level.

For me, this was my first physics class, and then my next one, and then my next, and probably the one after.

If you think failing a test is bad you have never taken a physics class. I have never had a class where failing is considered an average grade, but it has seemed to become more and more common throughout my physics classes.

I don’t think it is that my professors are particularly mean. In fact, I think that my physics professors have been some of the if not the most exceptional professors that I have had throughout my education. I think it’s just because physics is hard.

Ironically my physics classes are only four-unit courses. For comparison, my math and chemistry classes are both five-units.

So why is it so hard?

You know those word problems on your math exams? Yeah, those are always the hardest questions. I mean you read the problem and then your like “Ok, so now what?” Ok then, well imagine a whole class based around these types of questions. That is the essence of physics.

More so than any other subject physics relies on perspective. You can know all the formulas, equations, and identities in the world but if you don’t know how to apply them then they might as well not exist. That is what separates applied mathematics and pure mathematics. To have to interpret, apply, and only then solve leads to the difficulty of physics. In fact, I would say that the solving part is often the easiest part of the whole process, many times I may only have to setup and equation without even being expected solve them.

However, that is not to say that the math in these classes is easy. Ironically enough over the past year I have felt that I have learned more in my math journey from my physics than my math classes many times. Derivatives, integration, gradients, partial derivatives, partial integration, series, and line integrals are all concepts that I have learned in my physics classes before my math classes. That is not to say that I do not use my fair share of models or approximations, but to show just how correlated these subjects are.

So yeah, physics is hard, but it is for good reason. Everything, I mean everything in physics applies to life. I do not think I have had another class aside from psychology where I actively notice principles I learned in class from out of class. So next time that I find myself starting at a physics problem frustrated by the seemingly needless difficulty I remind myself it is for good reason.