Learning definitions?

[Guest Aniruddh]

Hey Guys,

 

I have just started my IB (about a month in) and in Physics we have completed Measurement as well as Motion in class. I thought it'd be a good time to start preparing my notes and I plan on completing them for my subjects over the weekend (Friday is a holiday as well). While I was browsing through the syllabus, I saw several terms like displacement, distance, speed, velocity etc... under the understandings section. Are we supposed to learn the formal definitions of those terms or just 'understand' them? Will we asked to state the meaning of those terms or simply apply our understandings in other questions? It doesn't explicitly mention that we are to learn them but I don't want to miss anything out while making my notes.

 

Any help is appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Aniruddh

[Emmi]

Learn both the formal definition and what it actually means. The IB often asks you to explicitly state the definition of X on exams, and this is the time to spit out that memorized formal definition of whatever term they're asking about. However, for applying it to questions and problems, you'll want to understand what they mean beyond just a definition. Even if they don't ask you to do something like this for "velocity" or "displacement," they might for other terms later on, and it's a good habit to get into now.

[Guest Aniruddh]

Learn both the formal definition and what it actually means. The IB often asks you to explicitly state the definition of X on exams, and this is the time to spit out that memorized formal definition of whatever term they're asking about. However, for applying it to questions and problems, you'll want to understand what they mean beyond just a definition. Even if they don't ask you to do something like this for "velocity" or "displacement," they might for other terms later on, and it's a good habit to get into now.

 

Any help as to where can I get the formal definitions preferred by IB? Is it okay if the definition is in my own words, because I have trouble memorizing definitions; I prefer understanding the concept and then writing in my own words.

Edited August 14, 2014 by Aniruddh

[Emmi]

The syllabus should list the definitions, as well as any IB-specific physics books.

[Guest Aniruddh]

The syllabus should list the definitions, as well as any IB-specific physics books.

The syllabus just has the list of the terms themselves, not the definitions, and the book that our school has the prescribed (Physics for the IB Diploma by K.A. Tsokos, 5th ed) doesn't have the formal definitions (at least not upto Kinematics); are definitions for Wikipedia, etc. fine? Also, for quantities like speed, does the formula count as the definition for one mark questions?

Edited August 14, 2014 by Aniruddh

[IBfreakingout!]

The IB often has specific words or phrases that you need to state to get the full mark(s) for definitions. 

 

Often in multiple choice questions, I find that all options are 'correct' and they are looking for the 'more correct' definition which sometimes is extremely difficult to pick up on. Often different books have slightly different definitions and these multiple choice can contain both definitions. That makes it even more confusing because the book you're using may have a definition that the IB doesn't think is 'more correct'. 

 

So all I feel I can do is look at the answers and learn them... so if you have access to past papers then look at definitions from them.... if you don't have papers then find them online. You won't find all of them, but even some may give a good collection of definitions. Its not a very structured way.... but you can use your book definitions for the rest of them. Also, a lot of the time IB definitions are basically the formula written in words, eg acceleration is the change in velocity over time. 

[Ossih]

I can see why you're confused. The new syllabus doesn't have any definitions explicitly states on them. I'd suggest to learn the definitions from the old syllabus of the corresponding topic.