Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Sunday, July 23, 2023

Study Aid Review: Ultimate Physics 3 Tutor - Electricity and Magnetism Series - Volume 1

 



First, as the word TUTOR implies this is a DVD to help you learn how to do physics problems. It is not a DVD on the history of physics, a documentary, or a "physics is great" kind of set. It is simply a supplement to help you learn the process of how to do problems.  If you are not in physics, teaching yourself physics, or close to taking physics this is probably not for you. You would be better off looking for a good documentary. Also if watching a recorded lecture does not fit your learning style you would probably not get the most out of it.

For those of you who have the need for it, this is the best supplement that I have found that presents problems in the same manner as the material covered in your book. Jason (Gibson) has structured this DVD and volume 2 of this set to introduce the topic, give some of the theory behind the topic, and present the equations that will be utilized in one section, then he starts working on the problems on that topic in a separate section. This helps split some of the material up, especially when the "lecture" material can take over an hour for some of the topics. It just makes things flow better, and he can give more example problems that way.

Like the predecessor physics DVDs he has put out, it is geared more toward algebra-based physics than calculus, although he does begin to add more of the calculus theories for some of the material. Some of the problems he goes through require very basic integration, and, if you are taking calculus-based physics you should have had at least a semester of calculus by the time you get to this material. So, the calculus he uses should really not be hard. Jason does a lot more deriving of the equations in this series than he has in his other DVD sets and really does try to show how the various electric field and electric potential equations are related to each other. But unlike what you may get in class, Jason does not skip steps or presume you know more than you really do. Of course, if you do not follow it the first time around you can re-watch the sections. At the core, it is giving you examples of how the questions are worded, and strategies for how to solve them. The problems range from very easy "plug and chug" examples to more complex deriving and proof kinds of problems where you are manipulating the formulas but are not given numbers. If used as a supplement to class and homework this will help you immensely.

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