Hear from students studying VCE Physics!
Keira (Year 12)
My name is Keira and I’ve chosen Year 12 Physics because I wanted to learn and gain a deeper understanding about how the world works but really it’s also to help me get into Civil Engineering. I didn’t like Biology in Year 10 and Chemistry wasn’t something I was interested in so I enjoyed how Physics makes more sense and has really in-depth explanations as to how these concepts in everyday life work. If you choose this subject you can expect lots of challenging questions to answer in class, discussions (that can turn into debates amongst your friends), learning about how things can move and spin without contact and how we can generate electricity and how we can transport that to our homes. Physics can sound overly menacing and complicated but it’s a really fun and interesting subject to learn about. My favourite thing and something I find rewarding about this subject is when you think about random things in life and wonder how it works and then it all clicks in your head. You sit there satisfied with yourself knowing that you can apply your knowledge to explain to yourself why and how these phenomena work and exist. The most challenging thing about this subject is when you’re finding a concept difficult to understand. Something I like to do to overcome this is by really dumbing down the words and making your own gibberish to understand the content for yourself. There can be times where the content is overwhelming and it may fly over your head but really trying to break down those concepts into the basics can really help you gain a better understanding as to how it works. Using slang instead of the formal words and even modelling concepts with your stationary helped my friends and I understand lots of laws and concepts. My advice to anyone who may want to do Physics, you may walk into this subject blind thinking that you can plug and jug (using values and formulas to answer) questions and come out with an easy mark but it’s beyond that. There is a lot of effort and practice needed to do really well in this subject. Practising worksheets and revision help a lot but having theoretical knowledge really helps when it comes to Physics. You’ll be debating with yourself, constantly asking yourself why this and what if to really test your understanding of the content. Understanding the theory is more important than remembering formulas and throwing numbers in so that you can understand what these numbers mean, what these formulas mean and can give you, where they come from and how they’re all inter-related.
Bach (Year 12)
My name is Bach and I've chosen Physics for one of my year 12 subjects because in my opinion, Physics is really enjoyable and helpful for my future career path as an engineer. When you study other sciences like Chemistry, you can use Physics knowledge to explain some of the concepts in Chemistry, even when there are slight differences between the way they explain it. By choosing Physics as one of your year 12 subjects, you can expect a broad knowledge of how things work. As I said before, it is fun when I find the two subjects related, it is one of the most favourite things when I study Physics. Physics can be challenging when you do not have a deep mastery of the concepts. Through personal experience, a comprehensive understanding of the various topics has contributed to me being able to achieve outstanding results in Sacs. Studying Physics personally helps me to build my own boat project at home and it is very rewarding.