DO Physics or Dr. Wile Physics?

[Garga]

I was all set for my son to use Derek Owen's Physics...but then I started hearing that it might be overly mathy?  My son is capable of the math, but is it unnecessarily mathy?  I don't want my son to lose his enjoyment of science because his science class is mostly a math class. 

And then I heard that Dr. Wile has online classes for the science books he wrote.  I've only managed to find three reviews of his online class.  They were all positive, but...only three.  We used his Chemistry book last year with an online teacher through CurrClick to help my son with questions, so we've seen his writing style.  But how was Dr. Wile's teaching of Physics?  Or, if you didn't take his online class, how was the physics book?

I was hoping we could sign up for Clover Creek, but that got filled up too fast and we missed out.

[Garga]

Hmm... I wrote and asked Berean Builders (the website where you can get Dr. Wile's books and classes) about math in Dr. Wile's physics, and they wrote back and said there's a lot of it.  

I asked them to compare the amount of math in chemistry to the amount of math in physics and this was the response:

"There is both more math and more difficult math in physics than in chemistry.   Since Dr. Wile's physics is vector based nearly every question requires converting it into a mathematical equation and solving for the answer.  The end of each chapter contains practice problems in addition to the end of chapter review and appendix B of the book contains even more practice problems.  Your son should have no problem since he has completed geometry as long as he knows and understands sin, cosin, and tan."

I don't know yet what "vector based" means.  (I never took physics in school.)  It sorta sounds to me like Physics just has a lot of math and that's normal.  Since writing the first post, I see there's something called conceptual physics, but I don't think I want that.  I am looking for a regular ol' high school physics class.  Nothing too crazy-advanced, nothing oversimplified.  Just a normal physics class.

It kinda sounds like both DO and Dr. Wile are about the same.  But if anyone has any insights or comments on either of the online classes, I'd love to hear them. 

Right now, I'm leaning slightly more toward DO, just because I'm tired of being tied to a live online class.  We had three live classes this year and we could never take a break, except at Christmas, because all of the three classes took breaks (fall or spring) at different times.  I felt tied down to the schedule.  For DO, we can work at 3 in the morning if we want to.  And take an extra 3 months if we want to.  I'm drawn to the flexibility of a DO class.

But I don't want to jump into anything without thinking it all through carefully. 

[Julie of KY]

My son took Derek Owens Physics. It was perfect for a STEM kid as an introduction to physics. It is more mathy than what I was looking for for my daughter and therefore she has a spot in Clover Creek.

I would say Derek Owens is a solid algebra based physics course - not too mathy in my opinion for physics. However it is NOT a conceptual physics course to be taken before the math skills are there. It may or may not be what you are looking for depending on your student and needs.

[RootAnn]

My oldest took DO Physics when she was a freshman. In retrospect, while she handled Honors, I shouldn't have had her step it up to honors level. (DO allows you to choose after a month or so - or you can choose right away. Honors is one or two more sections each chapter plus an extra page on each test.) I definitely thought it was math-heavy, but I personally liked that. (DD didn't. Strangely, she LOVED the math in her chem class the following year.)

Velocity of an object is an example of a vector. Velocity is speed (a magnitude, a number, like 35 meters per second) plus direction (32 degrees to the northwest). So, when he's showing a boat heading across a stream, you have the boat heading straight across the water but also the stream's push in a different direction. So, the boat ends up going diagonally.

[regentrude]

16 hours ago, Garga said:

I was all set for my son to use Derek Owen's Physics...but then I started hearing that it might be overly mathy?  My son is capable of the math, but is it unnecessarily mathy?  I don't want my son to lose his enjoyment of science because his science class is mostly a math class.

There is not such thing as "unnecessarily mathy" physics. Physics is a quantitative science, and you have to use math to actually do anything and to really understand the relationships.

DO is an algebra based course. That's the lower end of math for physics courses, and a suitable level for high school.

ETA: "Vector based" means that it uses simple trigonometry. Which is normal and necessary, because physical quantities that have directions must be described by vectors (force, velocity, acceleration all have directions) and are handled by decomposing them into components.

 

[Garga]

14 minutes ago, regentrude said:

There is not such thing as "unnecessarily mathy" physics. Physics is a quantitative science, and you have to use math to actually DO anything and to really understand the relationships.

DO is an algebra based course. That's the lower end of math for physics courses, and a suitable level for high school.

 

Yes, I see what you mean.  

I read two reviews where two people had said that the physics class came across as almost exclusively a math class with little else and their students hated it.  I didn’t know if that was normal or not, or just those two reviewers opinions.  And I didn’t know how knowledgeable those opinions might be.  Perhaps their expectations were completely wrong.  Or perhaps the teacher did overly focus on the math.

That’s the thing with reviews.  You don’t always know if the reviewer knows what she’s talking about or if her child is so completely different from yours that the review doesn’t apply to your situation.  

But I am learning that physics does require quite a bit of math.  So for whichever class my student takes, I’ll be sure he understands that there will be a lot of math involved.  Fortunately, he does well with his math.

I didn’t take physics in high school, and even if I did, it would have been 30 years since I touched it, so I don’t know for myself what to expect in a physics class.  Thank goodness for online teachers.  But it’s hard to pick a class when you know nothing about the topic.  So, I rely on you guys to fill me in/give me feedback before I choose.  I especially like hearing from you on math/science classes, since you know so much about math/science.

[EmilyGF]

23 minutes ago, Garga said:

Yes, I see what you mean.  

I read two reviews where two people had said that the physics class came across as almost exclusively a math class with little else and their students hated it.  I didn’t know if that was normal or not, or just those two reviewers opinions.  And I didn’t know how knowledgeable those opinions might be.  Perhaps their expectations were completely wrong.  Or perhaps the teacher did overly focus on the math.

I think an "overly mathy" physics class is one where the students grind through the math without understanding the physics (a perfect description of my high school physics class, unfortunately). While physics requires math, a student with little-to-no conceptual or physical understanding and good math skills may end up getting good grades without much actual understanding. That was me. 

Emily

[EKS]

A good physics class is going to feel like an applied math class because that is essentially what it is.  If you're concerned that your son is going to lose his enjoyment of science because of it, you could choose not to have him do it at all.  However, I suspect that a lot of kids become disillusioned by science and engineering when they get to college when they find out that there is a lot of math involved and that even the hands on stuff (or some of us would say *especially* the hands on stuff) is a never ending exercise in tedium. (And I'm saying this as a person who majored in biochemistry, worked in the field for 10 years, and loves science!)

That said, if you're looking for an excellent algebra based high school physics course, DO is what you want.  If you want a physics course that removes most of the math, you want conceptual physics.

[regentrude]

1 hour ago, Garga said:

Yes, I see what you mean.  

I read two reviews where two people had said that the physics class came across as almost exclusively a math class with little else and their students hated it.  I didn’t know if that was normal or not, or just those two reviewers opinions.  And I didn’t know how knowledgeable those opinions might be.  Perhaps their expectations were completely wrong.  Or perhaps the teacher did overly focus on the math.

I have been teaching physics for 16 years, and my experience is that this is a problem for students whose math preparation is not solid; they have to focus overly much on the math and lose sight of the physics behind it.

A student taking an algebra/trig based physics class needs to be able to solve equations and systems of equations with two variables without having to think about it; it needs to be automatic. Likewise, the student should be able to use sin, cos, tan without having to think about it each time. To a student who cannot do this, the physics class will feel like math drudgery because he needs too much of his brain to do the math and will be unable to focus on the physics concepts.

So, make sure that your son's algebra skills are rock solid. If they are not, taking physics will cause frustration.

[Garga]

32 minutes ago, regentrude said:

I have been teaching physics for 16 years, and my experience is that this is a problem for students whose math preparation is not solid; they have to focus overly much on the math and lose sight of the physics behind it.

A student taking an algebra/trig based physics class needs to be able to solve equations and systems of equations with two variables without having to think about it; it needs to be automatic. Likewise, the student should be able to use sin, cos, tan without having to think about it each time. To a student who cannot do this, the physics class will feel like math drudgery because he needs too much of his brain to do the math and will be unable to focus on the physics concepts.

So, make sure that your son's algebra skills are rock solid. If they are not, taking physics will cause frustration.

 

That makes sense!  Got it.  What you wrote above clears up the confusion I had about why some people would say physics was too mathy.  Like a lock clicking in to place.  

My son gets As on all his math work and has good retention.  I asked him what he thought about what you wrote and he says that he finds the above math topics to be relatively easy. 

[MarkT]

Sounds like you want something more of the Conceptual Physics type - which I think is best for 8th and 9th graders IMHO.

Yes Clover Creek is the best first course in Physics!

[Garga]

2 hours ago, MarkT said:

Sounds like you want something more of the Conceptual Physics type - which I think is best for 8th and 9th graders IMHO.

Yes Clover Creek is the best first course in Physics!

Actually, I think I just didn't understand physics until this thread.  I don't want Conceptual after all.  Regentrude's post cleared up my confusion about why some people say DO is too "mathy."  

My younger son was slow to warm up to math, so maybe when he's in 9th, I'll try to get him into Clover Creek then, so thank you for the feedback.  Perhaps for him, we'll do conceptual physics in 9th, then chem and bio after that, so the feedback is still useful.

[TarynB]

3 hours ago, Garga said:

Actually, I think I just didn't understand physics until this thread.  I don't want Conceptual after all.  Regentrude's post cleared up my confusion about why some people say DO is too "mathy."  

My younger son was slow to warm up to math, so maybe when he's in 9th, I'll try to get him into Clover Creek then, so thank you for the feedback.  Perhaps for him, we'll do conceptual physics in 9th, then chem and bio after that, so the feedback is still useful.

 

Just a heads up, Clover Creek uses Conceptual Physics by Hewitt as the textbook spine, but it is NOT just a conceptual physics course. The instructor has crafted it to be an algebra-based physics course. It is a fantastic course taught by an awesome teacher (one of the best courses DS has ever taken, and he's done quite a few!) and is a great "first" or "only" physics course, but is not just conceptual. 

[MorningGlory]

I'm partial to Derek Owens myself. Although we have not used his physics program, we have used several of his math courses, and my son really connected with DO's style, format, and sense of humor. This son is highly driven, so he had no problem whatsoever scheduling out the course himself and meeting his self-imposed deadlines. He loved the flexibility of making his own schedule and not being tied down to an outside entity's schedule. My second son would have struggled with that "freedom", so we used an online school for his upper math courses. 

I'm not familiar with Dr. Wile's new editions. I did tutor a poor physics student once who was struggling with the Apologia physics program, and to be brutally honest, that text made me want to put my head through a wall. Ha! Maybe the newer program via Dr. Wile is better??? Have you been able to to look at that textbook?

Good luck with your decision! I'm so sorry that Clover Creek filled up so quickly. ? 

[Garga]

On 5/2/2018 at 8:24 AM, MorningGlory said:

I'm partial to Derek Owens myself. Although we have not used his physics program, we have used several of his math courses, and my son really connected with DO's style, format, and sense of humor. This son is highly driven, so he had no problem whatsoever scheduling out the course himself and meeting his self-imposed deadlines. He loved the flexibility of making his own schedule and not being tied down to an outside entity's schedule. My second son would have struggled with that "freedom", so we used an online school for his upper math courses. 

I'm not familiar with Dr. Wile's new editions. I did tutor a poor physics student once who was struggling with the Apologia physics program, and to be brutally honest, that text made me want to put my head through a wall. Ha! Maybe the newer program via Dr. Wile is better??? Have you been able to to look at that textbook?

Good luck with your decision! I'm so sorry that Clover Creek filled up so quickly. ? 

 

I haven't seen Dr. Wile's newest physics book.  I know that he made many changes to his chemistry book and people say the newest chem book is very good and they like it much better than the Apologia edition.  Hopefully the same is true of the physics.

ETA:    I was confused. I thought the 2nd edition of the physics book was a newly written non-apologia book.  It’’s not.  It’s the same book as always.  It’s not updated. So ignore the above paragraph.

With that said, unless something else comes out of nowhere that makes me rethink everything, I'm going with Derek Owens.  My son liked his sample lecture slightly more than Dr. Wile's sample lecture.  And I love that we won't be tied to a live class.  We'll have a live class for pre-calc next year and that's enough for us.  This year, we had two live online classes and one in-person live class and I am so tired of being tied to three different schedules.

[klmama]

13 minutes ago, Garga said:

My son liked his sample lecture slightly more than Dr. Wile's sample lecture.  

Where did you find Dr. Wile's sample lecture?  Link?

[Garga]

7 minutes ago, klmama said:

Where did you find Dr. Wile's sample lecture?  Link?

 

https://bereanbuilders.com/ecomm/online-classes/

Scroll down until you see a tab for "Video Sample."  It's the entire 40 minute lecture for the first chapter of the Chemistry book, so it's a good long sample of exactly what to expect.  

 

[Another Lynn]

18 hours ago, Garga said:

 

I haven't seen Dr. Wile's newest physics book.  I know that he made many changes to his chemistry book and people say the newest chem book is very good and they like it much better than the Apologia edition.  Hopefully the same is true of the physics.

With that said, unless something else comes out of nowhere that makes me rethink everything, I'm going with Derek Owens.  My son liked his sample lecture slightly more than Dr. Wile's sample lecture.  And I love that we won't be tied to a live class.  We'll have a live class for pre-calc next year and that's enough for us.  This year, we had two live online classes and one in-person live class and I am so tired of being tied to three different schedules.

Is there a new physics book?  I only find the 2nd edition (dated 2004) when I search.  

[Garga]

49 minutes ago, Another Lynn said:

Is there a new physics book?  I only find the 2nd edition (dated 2004) when I search.  

 

Sorry, I was meaning his own physics book and not any Apologia books that he might have been part of.  

[Another Lynn]

3 minutes ago, Garga said:

 

Sorry, I was meaning his own physics book and not any Apologia books that he might have been part of.  

Yes, so has he written a non-Apologia physics book?  

[Garga]

8 minutes ago, Another Lynn said:

Yes, so has he written a non-Apologia physics book?  

Hang on....you’re right.  He hasn’t, has he.  It’s the old book.  I’m sorry.  

[mirabillis]

How hard is DO Hon Physics for a strong math student (11th grade) with concurrent AP Calc? Workload? Time?

[Garga]

3 minutes ago, mirabillis said:

How hard is DO Hon Physics for a strong math student (11th grade) with concurrent AP Calc? Workload? Time?

 

I can’t answer exactly, but will toss out there that you can do the work in the class for about a month and *then* decide if you want to be in honors or not. So, if you start off as honors and think it’s too much, you just back off.  Or vice versa.  If you start off not in honors and realize it’s too easy, you can add in the honors work for the rest of the class and call it honors.

I have found that when people give me amouts of time it takes their kids to do things, it isn’t the amount of time it takes my kids to do things.  So, even if someone says, “Oh, I did the honors in 1.5 hours a day,” that doesn’t mean mine will.  

[RootAnn]

4 hours ago, Garga said:

I have found that when people give me amounts of time it takes their kids to do things, it isn’t the amount of time it takes my kids to do things.  So, even if someone says, “Oh, I did the honors in 1.5 hours a day,” that doesn’t mean mine will.  

Insert the old "i agree" emoticon here. I can't even say this for two of my own kids. (I have a history plan that two of my kids used. One took all school year plus some of the summer. Another got it done in a semester.) I couldn't tell you how long it took my DD#1 - just that she took almost 11 months to get the Honors done (well). We had to incorporate more on-going review into the course after a very rough midterm exam.

[StillStanding]

On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 4:05 PM, Garga said:

Hmm... I wrote and asked Berean Builders (the website where you can get Dr. Wile's books and classes) about math in Dr. Wile's physics, and they wrote back and said there's a lot of it.  

I asked them to compare the amount of math in chemistry to the amount of math in physics and this was the response:

"There is both more math and more difficult math in physics than in chemistry.   Since Dr. Wile's physics is vector based nearly every question requires converting it into a mathematical equation and solving for the answer.  The end of each chapter contains practice problems in addition to the end of chapter review and appendix B of the book contains even more practice problems.  Your son should have no problem since he has completed geometry as long as he knows and understands sin, cosin, and tan."

I don't know yet what "vector based" means.  (I never took physics in school.)  It sorta sounds to me like Physics just has a lot of math and that's normal.  Since writing the first post, I see there's something called conceptual physics, but I don't think I want that.  I am looking for a regular ol' high school physics class.  Nothing too crazy-advanced, nothing oversimplified.  Just a normal physics class.

It kinda sounds like both DO and Dr. Wile are about the same.  But if anyone has any insights or comments on either of the online classes, I'd love to hear them. 

Right now, I'm leaning slightly more toward DO, just because I'm tired of being tied to a live online class.  We had three live classes this year and we could never take a break, except at Christmas, because all of the three classes took breaks (fall or spring) at different times.  I felt tied down to the schedule.  For DO, we can work at 3 in the morning if we want to.  And take an extra 3 months if we want to.  I'm drawn to the flexibility of a DO class.

But I don't want to jump into anything without thinking it all through carefully. 

We are doing Physics this year with Apologia (planning to do Advanced Physics with Apologia next year). We did Chemistry w/Apologia last year. I don't know why they (Costumer Service?) said Physics had more math and was harder. It doesn't and it is not. We found it actually easier. It is algebra based with a bit of trigonometry (Sine, Cosine, Tangent). Even if you have not done any trigonometry the book teaches you the basics you will need to solve the problems. 

I don't know anything about DO classes. We have enjoyed Apologia's Physics (and the chemistry too). The labs are a bit simple so I would like to add something this summer (and next year) to supplement them but I have not decided what. I am looking at this: http://www.qualitysciencelabs.com/physics/ but I want to ask the Hive for reviews before I purchase it :) 

[Garga]

6 hours ago, StillStanding said:

We are doing Physics this year with Apologia (planning to do Advanced Physics with Apologia next year). We did Chemistry w/Apologia last year. I don't know why they (Costumer Service?) said Physics had more math and was harder. It doesn't and it is not. We found it actually easier. It is algebra based with a bit of trigonometry (Sine, Cosine, Tangent). Even if you have not done any trigonometry the book teaches you the basics you will need to solve the problems. 

I don't know anything about DO classes. We have enjoyed Apologia's Physics (and the chemistry too). The labs are a bit simple so I would like to add something this summer (and next year) to supplement them but I have not decided what. I am looking at this: http://www.qualitysciencelabs.com/physics/ but I want to ask the Hive for reviews before I purchase it ?

 

That is interesting.   I wonder if it’s like Regentrude said and the better the student is at math, the easier the math in the science class feels?  Or if physics math really is easier?  

After reading through this thread, I’m not worried about the math anymore.  I had noticed that Dr. Wile’s chemistry had 48 labs, while DO’s physics only has 10. I don’t know enough about labs to know why, but it does seem that physics labs have a different flavor to them vs chem or bio.  But that’s just me looking in without any understanding of how a physics class works.  I don’t even know how to explain what I mean.  I just get an impression that physics labs will be different from the kind of labs we’re used to, with chemicals and beakers and bunsen burners.

[regentrude]

1 hour ago, Garga said:

That is interesting.   I wonder if it’s like Regentrude said and the better the student is at math, the easier the math in the science class feels?  Or if physics math really is easier?  

I am puzzled about the comment with the math. The math that gives students trouble in chemistry is usually prealgebra and simple algebra -  a lack of understanding about rations and proportionalities makes stoichiometry difficult for many students, but the math itself is middle school/jr high math. If this was a very rigorous chem course, it may have included material that used logarithms and exponential functions (which students would use in an algebra based physics course as well if that covers RC circuits during the second semester). Chemistry does not need any trigonometry or vectors, and I do not recall that students need to solve quadratic equations in chemistry either - all math skills needed in an algebra bed physics course.

A part of the issue can be in the presentation of the problems. Are students manipulating equations to obtain symbolic answers, or are the problems plug&chug with numbers? I can present the same material and pose almost identical problems in very different ways that require different math insights (for example, plugging numbers in the calculator and have the calcuator spit out the solution to a quadratic equation is easier for students than manipulating the quadratic formula with symbols.)

[Dicentra]

On 5/6/2018 at 7:52 PM, regentrude said:

I am puzzled about the comment with the math. The math that gives students trouble in chemistry is usually prealgebra and simple algebra -  a lack of understanding about rations and proportionalities makes stoichiometry difficult for many students, but the math itself is middle school/jr high math. If this was a very rigorous chem course, it may have included material that used logarithms and exponential functions (which students would use in an algebra based physics course as well if that covers RC circuits during the second semester). Chemistry does not need any trigonometry or vectors, and I do not recall that students need to solve quadratic equations in chemistry either - all math skills needed in an algebra bed physics course.

A part of the issue can be in the presentation of the problems. Are students manipulating equations to obtain symbolic answers, or are the problems plug&chug with numbers? I can present the same material and pose almost identical problems in very different ways that require different math insights (for example, plugging numbers in the calculator and have the calcuator spit out the solution to a quadratic equation is easier for students than manipulating the quadratic formula with symbols.)

 

I agree with Regentrude.  The math skills involved in high school physics are higher level than the math skills involved in high school chem.  High school chem (even Reg Chem) will involve a lot of work with scientific notation, though, which can throw a lot of students.  I think chem math sometimes gets a bad rap because students are having to grapple with chemistry concepts at the same time they are also trying to do math. Chemistry concepts are just so dang abstract that doing both at the same time uses a lot of brain power.

To the bold above, Regentrude...  The only time that students need to potentially solve a quadratic equation would be in solving some equilibrium problems.  And they'd solve it using the quadratic formula, not factoring.  I only cover equilibrium mathematically in Honors Chem, though, not Reg Chem.  So quadratic equations do make a very, very brief appearance in high school chem.

I think the OP decided to go with DO but I just wanted to put in another vote for that course, particularly if the asynchronous aspect is wanted.  DD took his Honors Physics in Grade 10 and did well.  I was impressed with the layout of the course, the teacher, and the content covered.