Concise Tips for Solving Physics Problems

• Show lots of work, including various units. It makes you a bit more focused, helps you to go back and figure out what mistake you might have made, and helps you get partial credit.
• Get in the habit of checking that the units makes sense. If you're working with volume, and your answer comes out in square meters, you made a mistake.
• Write down each bit of information given in the problem in a way that makes sense. So, if they say something like, "the car, initially at rest, slammed into..." then write down "v_0=0". Similarly, anything they don't give you but which enters the problem anyway, give it a name and write it down. For example, if the problem asks "what's the final velocity of the car after ..." then write down "v_f = ?".
• Think about information you might be missing. For example, if they say the ball is falling then you know the acceleration has magnitude 9.8 m/s^2. If they say one car passes another that tells you that at a certain time, their positions are the same, say x_1 = x_2.
• Think about the key to the problem. Many problems might look like there are lots of solutions, but there will be one thing that says "of all the solutions, this is the one I want." As one example consider a problem in which the question asks something like, "what's the velocity of the ball when it is furthest away from the baseball player?" The key here is to recognize either that the position is a maximum or perhaps that its derivative is zero (it's a critical point). You have to think about this though because the problem doesn't tell you how to solve for that special moment.